


Counterfeit Corruption

by SusieBeeca



Series: Amor Vincit Omnia [1]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: BDSM, Butch/Femme, Cunnilingus, Dubious morality in later chapters, Exhibitionism, F/F, Fingering, Flashbacks, Flogging, Gem War, Grounding, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrations, Lingerie, Mention of injuries, Minor foot fetish, PTSD, Pearl being salty, Pre-Canon, Pre-Gem War, Public Sex, Shell Shock, Spanking, Switching, Tit Play, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, chipped gem theory, clothespins, dubcon, mention of combat, tentadicks, unhealthy bdsm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2018-11-04 15:04:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10993359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SusieBeeca/pseuds/SusieBeeca
Summary: Bismuth thinks she's ready for rage of war, until she sees something no one should have to see. While her moods swing out of control, she finds comfort in an unlikely place.EDIT: Canon divergent (sort of?) as of "Lars of the Stars".





	1. Chapter 1

“How many did we lose?”

Rose didn’t respond right away; she was silently weeping, tears running off her chin and onto Pearl’s knuckles. It wasn’t until her arm was wet down to the elbow that her hand swelled with white light, and the four bloodied stumps began turning back into fingers.

“Rose. I asked you how many we lost.”

It took her a moment to realize she was being addressed, but when she turned from her Pearl she couldn't quite meet Biggs' eye. “I... I-I’m not sure.” 

Biggs knelt beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder, which seemed to calm her a bit. “I lost count after forty.”

“ _Forty..._ ” Pearl repeated in a hushed voice as she clutched her stickied, healing hand.

With one hand on Pearl’s arm to steady herself, Rose found her footing and stood, but she didn’t seem nearly as tall as she had before the battle. As she tried to wipe the blood and grass stains from her skirt---which accomplished little more than just smearing the filth around---she said in as steady a tone as she could force out: “We need to regroup and get back to the base before dawn, but for now, those who have been injured take precedence. Speaking of which...” She glanced over her shoulder, her brows knitted with worry. “Sapphire, how is she doing?”

She was slowly caressing the ridge of Ruby’s gem. “She’ll reform within the hour,” she said with a little waver. “A-a crushed ribcage isn’t the worst injury she’s ever sustained.” Then she looked up with a faint trace of darker blue on her cheeks peeking out from under her bangs. “Rose, I’m so sorry. We didn’t mean to unfuse, it was---” 

Rose just shook her head. “You don’t need to explain. This attack took us all by surprise.”

Still squeezing her new fingers to chase away the tingling numbness, Pearl looked around at what was left of their impromptu barricade. Some were in her position, cradling relatively minor wounds and either trying to heal themselves or waiting for their turn with Rose; some were fingering their cracked gems and letting out weird squeals and bleats as they struggled to keep their physical forms from surging out in crackling, spooling blobs. Most were either crying or being consoled. A few were wailing. Even though a light rain was spitting down at them, the air stank of burnt earth and molten rock. She nervously sucked on her teeth. She’d seen a lot in her day, but this was... new. It felt like she could absorb the emotions of the grieving around her, and it clung in the back of her throat. For the first time, she was beginning to understand why humans created gods to pray to.

When Biggs blared the horn, most of the survivors snapped to attention, and the ones that didn’t were gently pulled along by their compatriots. Rose waited until they were all gathered close enough to hear, and lit her gem, which made the rest quickly dim theirs---the rule was that outside of the base, no more than one could be alight at a time, lest they give their position away. In the panic, most had forgotten.

“I don’t need to tell you that tonight was one of the worst attacks we’ve seen yet,” she began, her hands spread. Tears were still fresh on her cheeks. “We all need time to grieve, but we have to remember that the fallen would want us to keep going. To survive.”

She paused as a murmur of agreement ran through the crowd, broken only by a few sobs.

“We need to get back to base while we still have the cover of dark, but first...” She did a scan of the survivors. It was pretty bleak. “Anyone who has minor damage, come with me. If anyone has been cracked or chipped, report to Snowflake; she’ll escort you to the fountain. I’ll need five to ten volunteers to aid those who can’t walk.” When she placed her palm on Pearl’s shoulder, she stood a little straighter. “Pearl will record the... the deaths.” She squeezed, and Pearl nodded, recognizing Rose’s subtle way of asking for her consent.

Snowflake was standing rigidly, her hands clasped behind her back. “Rose?”

“Yes?”

“What about her?” She tilted her head towards Bismuth. “Would you say she has ‘minor damage’, or... is it something worse?”

Rose gave her a once-over, her eyes lingering a bit on her gem. It was still solid, but something was clearly wrong with the rest of her: she was sitting in a strange position, like a marionette with half its strings cut; her head was lolled to one side, and while her arms loose and floppy her legs looked like each muscle fibre was coiled up as tight as it could go. Her normally-lively eyes were dull and unfocused, her lips moving wordlessly.

“Bismuth?”

“ _Kcht._ ” The sound had come from somewhere deep in her throat. She slowly brought her hands up and stared at them as if she couldn’t figure out whether or not they belonged to her.

“Oh stars, she’s shaking.” Pearl put a hand to her chest. “Rose, she’s been wounded.”

“Not physically,” she said under her breath.

“Stars...” She put a hand to her face, and then _raked_ her fingernails down, drawing globs of inky blood from her skin. They spilled over her knuckles, but Bismuth just stared into nothingness, gulping air in and out of her throat. “Hhhnh. No. No. _No!_ ”

Pearl took a step forward, but Rose quickly clapped a hand on her elbow. “No,” she said with a glint of danger in her voice. “Stay back, Pearl.” 

“She needs help!” she protested. “Look at her! She’s---”

“Stay back.” The look on her face softened a bit, and Rose loosened her grip on Pearl’s arm. Gently kneading at her skin, she added in a voice so low it tickled against her ear: “She’s in shock. Let her recover.”

“That’s right. She’ll need some quiet before she’s on the mend.” Sapphire rose gracefully and tucked Ruby’s gem into the neckline of her bodice, giving it a loving pat. “In the meantime, we should get her somewhere warm and try to get her to drink a glass of water.”

“Well, I think you just volunteered yourself, Saf’,” Snowflake called over her shoulder, halfway through her head count. “Call me a coward if you want, but I ain’t gettin’ near her when she’s gibbering like that.”

Pearl reflexively reached out when Rose’s hand slipped from her arm, but she pulled back when she realized there were others who needed her more. For a moment, she watched her leader as she left, heading towards what was left of their battalion with arms outstretched and face glimmering; then she reluctantly turned back to Bismuth. It didn’t feel safe to take her eyes off her for too long.

The shock hadn’t left her yet---in fact, it seemed to be getting worse. Bismuth had her arms wrapped around herself, her fingers digging into her skin; she was flicking her head back and forth, and what had previously sounded like attempts at words were now just frightened grunts.

“Um, Sapphire? Should we get her to the fountain? She looks like she needs more than a drink and a blanket.”

“Give us a moment, Pearl.” Sapphire sat herself by Bismuth’s knee and folded her petticoats around her. Speaking in a soft, even tone, she repeated her name until the blacksmith finally regained some control over her neck, lifting her head. 

“I know you’re scared,” Sapphire gentled. “You’re probably feeling very cold, too. Would you like us to make you a fire when we get back to the base?”

She shook her head. Even though it felt like she was eavesdropping on something intimate, Pearl couldn’t look away.

“It’s important to remember that you’re safe now,” she continued. “Try to ground yourself. Just take a deep breath, and tell me three things you can hear.”

Again, she shook her head, that horrible, helpless look marring her face.

“It’s alright, Bismuth. It’s going to be okay. Please just try and focus on what you can hear, okay? Can you tell me three things you can hear? Just three things.”

Her mouth moved slowly, stiffly, but she managed to find her voice. “I can... I can hear... crickets chirping,” she said, faltering at each word.

“Good, good. Two more things.”

She pressed her lips together. “Your voice.”

“One more thing.”

“I... something... something cracking,” she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut. “Banging.”

Sapphire exchanged a quick, worried glance with Pearl. “I... think that’s in your imagination,” she ventured when she turned back to Bismuth. “Can you tell me one more thing you can hear?”

“Wind.”

“Good, good.” She interlaced her fingers. “Now put your hand out and tell me three things you can feel.”

“Pebbles,” she muttered as she dug her nails through the ground. Her other hand was on her knee. “My leg.”

Sapphire nodded, but didn’t try to meet her eye. It didn’t look like Bismuth could make eye contact, anyway. “You’re doing very well. Now, one more thing.”

Her face was contorting with raw grief. “I can’t feel anything else.”

“That’s fine. You did a good job.” Another gander at Pearl, and Sapphire decided to put her cool hand on Bismuth’s elbow. “I want you to know how deeply sorry I am for---”

“ **NO!!** ”

She was instantly on her feet, towering above Sapphire with spittle flecking from her clenched teeth. “No! No, you do NOT get to be sorry!”

“Bismuth.” She held her hand up, palm open, presenting her gem; it was a sign of peace. “I understand that you’re---” 

“You don’t understand a _thing!_ ” Sapphire barely had time to leap out of the way before one of Bismuth’s hand-hammers split the ground by her feet. “You still have Ruby!” she roared through her tangled dreadlocks, raising another hammer. “Don’t you pity me and don’t you DARE pretend to know what this is like!”

A sour laugh left her lips when Pearl’s spear flashed between them, but she did shift her hand back to normal. “And fuck you too, princess.”

They silently watched her stomp off, and it wasn’t until she’d disappeared around the corner of the cavern’s mouth that Pearl pulled her weapon from in front of Sapphire’s prone form. “Did... did you know she’d do that?”

“I knew it was a possibility.” She graciously accepted Pearl’s hand up, and smoothed the creases from the front of her skirt. “She wouldn’t have actually attacked me.”

She hummed through her teeth as she stared at the fissure Bismuth had left in the soil. “I find that a little hard to believe after that display.”

Sapphire placed her hand against Pearl’s arm until it stopped shaking. “No. Bismuth doesn’t have it in her to hurt anyone.” Then she lifted her fringe from her eye, looking up at the taller gem. “You want to go after her, don’t you?”

She thinned her lips. “I suppose there’s no point lying to you, is there?”

“I’ll record the deaths,” she said quietly. “If you’re going to go, you should slip out soon. She’s gone to the---”

“The forge. I know.”

~

She stepped off the warp pad with more trepidation than she’d expected; although she’d been here so many times before, the entire area made her slightly uncomfortable. She loved Earth, she truly did, but its bizarre powers still could set her nerves on edge. She’d been crafted on Homeworld, where everything was stiff and certain and solid; the bubbling pools in the craters around her served as reminders that the crust she was trusting to keep her from sinking into the planet’s molten core was as thin and brittle as she felt herself. This was Bismuth’s terrain, not hers.

Once in front of the forge proper, she trailed her fingers over the door, testing its warmth---the metal had been moved recently. She pulled her fingers into a slim fist and raised it to the door, but paused before knocking. Would it do any good? Between the thickness of the fortified walls and the constant growling of the volcano, would she even be heard? And if she was---would Bismuth want to see her?

The first question was soon answered when she heard a _CLANG_ ringing out from inside, quickly followed by a splintering sound; if she had to guess, it was something---or several somethings---being pulverized. She jumped back when a second clang followed the first, twice as loud, with only a moment’s delay before a cacophony of banging and smashing thundered out hard enough to ripple the ground beneath her feet. She put her hand to her mouth and nervously picked at her lips. Whatever Bismuth was doing in there was rivaling the violence of the magma roiling through the mountain.

Pearl was just about to turn and scurry back to the warp pad when she heard---and felt---the cascading rumble of metal-on-metal that indicated the doors were opening. When Bismuth stepped out it was in a slow, pained shuffle, her head sagging and her massive shoulders slumped.

“Bismuth?”

She jerked her head up and immediately flinched backwards into a defensive stance, which faded back into a slouch when her eyes landed on Pearl. “Oh. It’s just you.”

“Yes... just me,” she said with an awkward smile.

Bismuth’s gaze trailed off to the side, and she halfheartedly wiped her knuckles over the sludge of sweat and soot on her forehead. “Rose sent you to comfort me, huh,” she said, her voice sullen.

Pearl stiffened. “Rose doesn’t tell me what to do.” She managed a peek over Bismuth’s shoulder, and saw what was left of the forge just before the doors slammed shut. “Did you trash the place?!”

She opened her mouth as if to speak, but closed it again with a grunt.

“Bismuth, that’s going to take ages to fix, and that’s time we don’t have right now!”

She shifted and rubbed at her baggy eyes. “I don’t care. Go, Pearl. Just... just go away.”

She didn’t. When she strode closer, Bismuth huffed and tried to move aside, but Pearl reached over and grabbed at her elbow. “I know you’re upset, but this isn’t the time to throw tantrums! You---”

“Go _away!_ ”

But Bismuth’s chest went cold when Pearl closed her eyes and, as if on instinct, turned her head to the side. Startled, she looked from her friend, and then up to her raised hand. Worry fluttered through her; when she’d yanked her arm out of Pearl’s grip, it must’ve looked like she was going to backhand her. And she’d just turned her head to take it. As smoothly and calmly as she could, Bismuth twisted her hands around, palms forward in a more peaceful gesture. Even centuries of being a renegade couldn’t fully undo basic pearl proclivities.

“It’s nothing that can’t be fixed in a night or two,” she said more soothingly, watching Pearl’s stance relax. “I just...” She started fumbling for words. “I... needed... I mean... it... I had to get it out of my system, I, and... better to take it out on the forge than on a gem, right?”

She instantly realized that was a mistake when she saw the tension crawl back into Pearl’s shoulders.

“I didn’t mean that. Not that way. I wouldn’t... ” She looked down at her palm, and was surprised to see a faint trickle of blood curling around her calluses. “I couldn’t.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Bismuth. Emmie wouldn’t have wanted that.”

The skin around her eyes crinkled as her face twisted up in agony; Pearl held a hand out, but it wasn’t enough to keep Bismuth from collapsing to her knees with an audible ‘pop’. “Oh stars, Pearl, _don’t_. Not now. Just, _please_ , leave me alone.”

The fingertips grazing her shoulder moved up to touch her face, but she thought better of it. “I understand if you don’t want to talk, but... I don’t think you should be alone right now,” she said quietly.

“Why? What do you think I’m gonna do, huh?”

She decided it best not to answer that question directly. “I just want to be there for you, Bismuth. And we don’t have to discuss... what happened today. We don’t need to talk, or even look at each other, for that matter.” She withdrew her hand and rested it on top of the other. “It’s possible to be alone when you’re with someone; I of all gems know that.”

A curious look flitted across her face, but she didn’t push it. Teasing Pearl about servitude was one thing, but she knew better than to pry about what sort of horrors she’d gone through before her emancipation.

“If you really don’t want to be around anyone, then I’ll respect your wishes, but... why don’t we just sit for awhile, hm?” She delicately took a seat on an outcropping of rock, her legs crossed at the ankles. “Let’s just sit. Just long enough to clear your mind a bit.”

“And then what?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Now, please...” She pulled the soupy, pouty face she usually used on Rose when she was trying to get her way. “Will you sit down next to me? Please?”

For a moment it looked like she was about to protest, but apparently the magic of those big blue eyes worked on her, too. “Only for you, Pearl,” she said grudgingly.

She sat down and balanced am arm on her knee; her elbow was brushing against Pearl’s wrist, and as much as she wanted to seize Bismuth’s hands in hers, she kept still. She could sense rather than see Bismuth shivering despite the sweltering heat. 

It would be best to let Bismuth make the first move---if she was willing to do so at all---so Pearl just sat, and she thought. She thought about Homeworld, but she kept far from that rusted-shut part of her mind that held the memories she didn’t want loose. She thought about her friend. Bismuth was an oddity among her kind; most of the craftsgems and blacksmiths spent the majority of their existence behind the scenes, only hearing about the outside world from snippets of conversations with the few gems who’d visit them in the bowels of buildings. She still sometimes ribbed Bismuth about the charmingly naive giddiness she’d shown when she first arrived on Earth, running from place to place and putting her hands all over each new thing she discovered. (The time she’d grabbed the beehive had been memorable, to say the least). It was hard to believe that was the same gem who was hunkering beside her with her lips set in a grim line, staring off into emptiness.

After a good ten minutes of nothing, Bismuth finally broke out of her stupor. She slowly opened and closed her fist until she could hold it steady. Then she reached into the small pocket on the underside of her apron and held her hand there for a moment, her knuckles shuffling the material as they moved; when she eventually withdrew her hand, she held it out so Pearl could see, and opened her sticky fingers.

“Oh stars,” she hissed, slapping a palm over her mouth. “Bismuth, put that away. I-I can’t look at that.”

“’Her’, Pearl.” She nudged her thumb through the shards. A few were darkening where they met the edges of her blood.

The sight of the shattered gem made that rusted trap in her brain burst open, spilling its memories out, tumbling over each other in horrid succession. “ _Please_. You shouldn’t be carrying th---her around with you. It’s not... it’s not right.”

“I was gonna make a little box for her,” Bismuth mumbled down at her palm, as if she hadn’t heard. She was still brushing the shards with a shaky tenderness, like she was petting a wounded creature. “A place for her to rest. We could do what the humans do---put her in the ground. Give her a grave. Say some words, that sort of thing.”

She didn’t want to tell her that that didn’t seem right, either---putting broken gems back into the dirt from whence they came still seemed barbaric to her. But what could she say? Pearl crouched beside her, focusing on the side of Bismuth’s face so she didn’t have to look at the carnage cradled in her hand. “We all loved her, Bismuth...” She hesitated, and then cupped her fingers into her friend’s broad shoulder. “But I know what you had with her was something special.”

She nodded, her eyes wet. “...Yeah. I-I know.”

And, for the time being, that was all that needed to be said. They sat together in silence as the sooty magma foamed in the craters around them. Bismuth held her ground despite the lingering unsteadiness crawling in her flesh; Pearl shifted from squatting to kneeling, but kept her hand on her arm. Her skin eventually went from glacially cool back to warm.

Finally, Bismuth brought her free hand up to her face and pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. “Pearl,” she whispered, “Pearl, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“I know. I understand.”

“Pearl... I’m... I’m...” Her voice was crackling, and ultimately broke: “I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna _do!_ ”

Her face crumpled and her chest began heaving, fat tears gushing from her eyes and streaking through the grime on her cheeks. “Pearl, Pearl, I don’t know---I don’t know---”

Pearl could sense on some primeval level that it was time to reach out, to touch. She seized her in a tight hug and buried her face deep in those thick dreadlocks, furiously blinking at her stinging eyes. Each time she sniffed she pulled in the smell of Bismuth’s sweat, her tears, the raw minerals around the splintered shards, the ashen blood in her hands and on her biceps. It was the acrid stench of death left on a living being. All she could say, over and over again, was “Shh, shh, shh.” It didn’t matter. Her friend wasn’t even listening ---she was just babbling nonsense, broken pieces of words.  
Pearl carefully moved her hands up to Bismuth’s face and swept the tears away, even though most of them just spilled over her thumb. With her other hand, she threaded her fingers through the multi-hued hair and massaged her scalp, which was so hot it felt like it was going to singe. Bismuth kept rubbing her wet eyes against her arms, her whole body shaking; they stayed like that for ages, just rocking back and forth, Pearl soothing and Bismuth sobbing.

“It should’ve been me,” she bawled into the crook of Pearl’s neck. “Stars, I should’ve---it should’ve---I should’ve been there for her---”

“No, no. You couldn’t have known. Even Garnet didn’t see it coming.”

“Y-you don’t understand. I froze. Pearl, I froze.” She pulled back and looked her straight in the eye with a piercing, fractured expression on her face. “I saw that _bitch_ charging at her, and I froze. If I’d ran even two seconds sooner, I could’ve saved her!”

“Um...”

“I knew it. I just knew it. I wasn’t cut out for this. I couldn’t protect her---I can’t protect anybody.” She stuffed the shards back in her pocket and then ran both hands over her face, frantically rubbing up and down. “What am I doing? I’m not a soldier. I’m just a bismuth.”

Grateful that the shattered gem was finally out of her sight, Pearl bit at her lips and chose her words carefully: “Rose says we can be anything we choose to be.”

“But _look_ at me!” She flung her arms up and down, helplessly gesturing at herself. “Look at how I’m reacting to this! Soldiers don’t do this!”

“Yes they do.” Pearl leaned back on her heels and placed her hands on her knees; despite their hug, it felt safest to give Bismuth a bit of breathing room, whether or not she physically needed it. “When soldiers start exhibiting what Homeworld considers ‘unusual symptoms’ despite having intact gems, they call it _’counterfeit corruption’_. They used to think it was a sign of cowardice, but we’ve since started learning that it’s a normal reaction to trauma.”

“I...” She ran the back of her hand over her nose, snuffling. “Normal?”

“Yes. It’s perfectly normal. And you should just let it happen, Bismuth.” The next part was going to take some delicate wording. “You know why quartz soldiers tend to have such anger problems?”

“Because they’re all made with a bug up their butt?”

She decided to ignore that. “Because they’re taught to repress it. To repress _everything_. And to simultaneously believe that they deserve everything that happens to them. You can only push those feelings down for so long before they... erupt.” As if to underline that, the volcano belched out a lick of oily smoke. “What you’re going through is understandable, and _not your fault_ , and by allowing it to happen, you’re letting yourself heal.”

Bismuth shook her head ruefully. “How do you always know the right thing to say?”

“Years of trial and error. Honestly, a lot more of the latter.”

She smeared the tears around her cheeks, and a sudden abashed expression crossed her face. “Pearl... please don’t tell anyone I broke down like that.” She turned a sweet, tear-streaked smile up to her. “Can you promise that to me?”

She simpered. “Everyone would understand, you know.”

“Pearl. I’m not asking you, I’m begging you. Don’t tell them, okay?” She hunched the side of her face into her shoulder in embarrassment. “Promise?”  
“Of course.” It took a few placid strokes to her cheek to make Bismuth turn to face her, and when their eyes met, Pearl decided to risk a quick peck on the very tip of her nose, grinning when those dusty cheeks darkened in a blush. “I promise, Bismuth,” she said softly as she ran her spindly fingers over her friend’s knuckles. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

The grief on her face finally cracked, and Bismuth chuckled as she put a big, broad hand atop Pearl’s. “You’re one of the good ones, princess, you know that?”

She let her hand drift up higher, and squeezed her delicate wrist. Then she pulled away.

They stared at each other for a moment, before---it was so fast, so unexpected, that Pearl couldn’t properly react. Bismuth’s lips were on hers. One hand on her waist, one on her neck, her eyelashes grazing against her cheeks every time she blinked. Pearl gasped, and felt a smooth, hot slickness pass her lips. Since she didn’t eat, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d _tasted_ something; this was sweet and pungent, and it reminded her of chalk and smoky loam. It wasn’t until Bismuth traced her fingers down from Pearl’s collarbone to her ribcage that she realized what she was feeling in her mouth was... oh stars, it was her tongue. Bismuth’s tongue was in her mouth. Bismuth’s _tongue_ was _in her mouth!_

With a startled cry, she slammed the heels of her hands on Bismuth’s shoulders and shoved her back. “Bismuth!” she shrieked, “What are you _doing?!_ ”


	2. Everything Makes Sense

_Note: Although this chapter is about consensual sex, there are mentions of past abuses. Read at your own risk._

~

Her hands were still hovering in the air where they’d been resting on Pearl’s body; one reached up to her mouth, touching her wet lips, and for a moment she looked just as confused as Pearl. Then, it clicked, and a look of sudden, crushing panic creased her brow when she realized what she’d just done. “Oh... I’m sorry,” she spluttered in a low, feeble voice, “I-I didn’t mean----I’m sorry, Pearl, I don’t---” 

Pearl had darted up to the tips of her toes, and the fluttering pang in her chest just tightened when she saw Bismuth’s form slump and crumble, her face cradled in her hands, her voice shaking with shame: “Oh stars, Pearl, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. _Please_ forgive me, I’m so, _so_ sorry!”

“I...it’s fine,” she forced out as she nervously wove her hands together, looking everywhere but down at her friend.

“No, it’s not.” She was still hiding her face. “I didn’t mean...”

It took her several long minutes to calm herself enough to kneel by Bismuth’s side again, but this time she didn’t try to touch her. “It’s fine. Really, it is. I know you’re not thinking clearly.” She was glad diplomacy came naturally to her kind.

“Well obviously not! I... Pearl, I want you to know I don’t think of you like that.”

She must have sensed her bristle, because she quickly added “That came out wrong. I... Pearl... I... That wasn’t an insult. It was a compliment.” Their eyes met again, and Pearl swallowed heavily when she saw the humiliation on Bismuth’s face. “I think you’re gorgeous,” she whispered, “But I don’t think of you like... like how Homeworld thinks of pearls. I _know_ you’re not just some whore who’d fuck any gem who put the moves on her.”

“Thank you,” she said primly, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks.

Bismuth let out a strained breath. “This is why I wanted to be alone. I just knew I’d do something stupid.”

“Bismuth.” She lightly touched her arm, but when that didn’t get a reaction, Pearl sat back down right in front of her so she’d have no choice but to meet her eye. “If I’ve learned anything from this war, it’s that nothing is stupid when you’re grieving. Everything makes sense, because nothing makes sense.”

The laugh she let out was still tinged with sadness, but it was as close to happy as she could have hoped for. “That’s the truest damn thing I’ve heard in ages!” 

But Pearl’s mind was elsewhere. ‘Gorgeous’. She’s said she was gorgeous.

Pearl’s eyes closed, and she tried to quiet her mind, but it just kept running back to that same thought that was catching like a needle on a broken record: when had she last been kissed? And not just a little peck on the cheek from a friend, but a real, full-throttle kiss, lips moving around each other in exploration?

Bismuth was still talking. “Every time I got scared,” she said, “Every time I thought I couldn’t make it another day, she was there. Emmie was there. She’d take my face in her little hands, and she’d kiss me between the eyes, and she’d tell me everything was going to be okay.”

Pearl looked down at her own hands. They’d been created to be soft and pliable, but hers were creased with old scars and rough spots that kept coming back no matter how many times she regenerated. She startled when her friend reached out and grabbed her by the elbows, her eyes glistening.

“She... she was the only one I thought I’d let into my heart,” Bismuth murmured, looking dangerously vulnerable, “But I guess I... I never realized that **you** were there, too.”

For a moment, all Pearl could hear was the silence that shrouded that single, painful sentence as it hung in the air.

“I...” She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She remembered the first time in her initial training when she’d talked back, and the gasps from the other Pearls at both her insubordination----and the punishment that followed. She remembered that sweet-faced one who had been sent to clean her up and rub liniment on her thighs, who’d dared to whisper something unthinkable to her when she thought they were alone. For her attempt at friendship, her punishment had been far worse than something that could be healed with soap and salve.

Pearl had long since learned it was safest to build walls, to keep the weaker parts of herself cloistered than to really let anyone in. She’d let her guard down once, many years later; she’d let someone, someone she thought was special, carefully crack and crumble through the edifices she’d erected... and that had ended in heartache, again and again, hadn’t it?

Bismuth was staring at her expectantly, but her expression was starting to waver, and Pearl realized she had a few seconds to say something---anything---to keep from giving her an emotional kick in the chin. She couldn’t take another blow, not now. 

So she gave the burly forearm a faltering pat. “Um... Thank you.”

Oops. Her face just _fell_.

“Okay. Alright.” She dusted her hands on her apron and unsteadily got to her feet. “I get it.”

Pearl was already rushing at her, her hands fluttering as if they could wave that away. “No, Bismuth, no, I didn’t---”

“It’s fine, I get it. You’re right.” Looking away, she ran a hand through her hair and twisted the frayed ends. “I should... go fix the forge.”

“Bismuth, I didn’t know what to say! You just sprang that on me!”

She threw her hands in the air. “Oh, what does it matter?! I could have given you all the warning in the world, and it wouldn’t have made a difference!”

“But---”

“Look.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes squeezed shut. “Pearl, I love you, but we all know that torch you’re carrying for Rose won’t go out anytime soon, and, fuck, every time I stop talking all I can hear is Emmie screaming, so why don’t we just drop it and pretend this never happened?” Then she let her eyes flit up to Pearl’s for just a moment, and she turned away, as if she could hide what was clearly etched on her face. “See? I told you to go away. I knew I’d fuck this up, and, well, I did. There you go, prophecy fulfilled.” She placed her palm on the door of the forge and leaned her body against it. “Now _please_... just leave me alone.”

She jumped back when a pale arm darted between her and the entrance. “No.”

Her jawline thickened as her teeth set on edge. “I know you don’t like taking orders, Pearl, but I’m asking you. As a friend---”

“No.” And she did something that was normally too taboo to even think about---she slapped her open palm down, not _on_ Bismuth’s gem, but _in_ it. Her fingers spread, feeling around the ridges that bridged the different colours, and she stared unflinchingly at Bismuth’s hot, blushing face. _“Listen to me.”_

With a pointy-nailed hand in her gem, she really had no choice.

“I don’t understand what you were talking about,” Pearl said in a flat voice. “I can’t. Pearls don’t know how to love---they only know how to worship. They find one gem and fixate on her, and it takes a true force of nature to pry them away.”

She nervously eyed Pearl’s wrist, but her own arms were too shaky to push her away. That kind of touch was visceral---gems either felt it from a lover, or in the blinding moment of panic before they were shattered. “W-what are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying...” She took a moment to steady herself. “I’m saying you’re as close to a ‘force of nature' as I can imagine.”

They stared at each other for one choking moment, and then Bismuth reached up and placed her palm on Pearl’s head, engulfing her gem. They stayed like that for some time, eyes leaking, arms juddering, and when they finally pulled away, somehow their hands fell into the other’s.

“Did you really mean what you said earlier?” Pearl said quietly. “When you said you loved me?”

Pearl did what Rose often did for her---she squeezed, asking Bismuth’s permission. And she squeezed back in answer. Something, some strange darkness lifted from her face, and she gave the slightest nod. Pearl could sense it---they’d reached a kind of understanding that couldn’t really be vocalized; it was something felt in silence, something resonant deep in their cores.

Pearl adored Rose, and Bismuth still treasured her fallen lover. But, since there was no way that kind of aching could ever really be soothed, they had to take what they had. And, at the moment, that was the kind of soft comfort that could be passed back and forth between comrades.

 _I’m... going to kiss her,_ Pearl thought, and gulped. _This is really going to happen._

When she felt the first sharp twinge deep between her legs, a bit of shame plucked at her---but she whisked it away. It wasn’t rare; even when they’d been in the trenches, on the front lines, by the barricades, it had happened. Everyone just grinned and looked the other way when gems fell on each other in the shadows. Garnet pretended it didn’t happen, but it wasn’t exactly a secret that her two halves would sometimes rush away, split apart, and join together in a much more carnal way. Even Rose, the outlier, had been accepted when she’d found her relief with humans---who was to say it was wrong?

Her hands moved of their own volition, and even though some distant, dismal part of her mind was crying out to her to stop, she just kept reaching out. She didn’t stop when her fingers grazed Bismuth’s face; she didn’t stop when she had her full cheeks in her palms; and she didn’t stop when she ducked her head to the side so that her pointy nose tucked along the ridge of Bismuth’s. This time, when their lips met, it was silky and serene. It had been so long, she worried that she could have forgotten how to kiss---but it came back as easily as anything she’d done. Although there was a clutch in her heart, she let it happen; she let Bismuth’s hands wander from her elbows on upwards, and she keened when she felt the first tremor of hesitation.

Everything made sense because nothing made sense. Or was it the other way around? 

She was used to being touched, but rarely with such fragility. Bismuth’s hands were bumbling around her upper arms, and Pearl could tell by the way her fingers were twitching that there were other things she’d much rather be fondling. Her right hand slowly snaked forward, but when it was an inch from Pearl’s chest she quickly moved it away and wound it around her slim waist instead. Her lips kept parting, only enough to taste. 

_She’s **shy!**_ Pearl realized, and she almost laughed. To think---she always just assumed a big strapping lass like Bismuth to be the type who’d take charge with her lovers, and yet here she was, obviously desperate to push further but too timorous to do so.

 _Is she afraid of hurting me?_ she wondered as she ghosted her fingertips along the little divots in the small of Bismuth’s back. _Or is she scared of... something else?_

Pearl hummed a contented little “ _Mmm_ ” against Bismuth’s lips, and placed her palm on top of those rough knuckles. Despite the heat flushing her face, she gripped her friend’s wrist and moved it away from her belly. She could feel Bismuth’s hand trembling as she guided it higher, which made something surge inside her; hot, wet heat was pooling in her leggings, steaming up her thighs. They were both panting, and Bismuth’s breathing went thin and reedy when her fingers finally danced over the small curve of her breast. “Pearl,” she hissed as she pulled and kneaded at it, eyes reverently closed. “Oh. _Pearl_.”

That quiet wheeze of surprise was enough for Pearl to make her move; with a moan, she gently, carefully probed at her chapped lips with the tip of her tongue. Bismuth gladly took her in, tugging so earnestly with her whole mouth. That fumy taste was back, but now it was heightened by the sharp sparkling of pleasure Bismuth gave her with each careful pinch of her nipple. 

“Wait.”

Pearl hadn’t realized she’d thrown her head back until she heard that one, hushed word, and snapped to attention. “What is it?”

Bismuth was trying to look at her, but her eyes kept wandering back down to the hand on her friend’s chest. “Let’s just...” She coughed, and slid her grip back down to Pearl’s belly. “Let’s just make sure we’re okay here.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Pearl, sweetie, is there anywhere I shouldn’t touch you?”

The little term of endearment felt like a warm, blooming blush flooding her body. “N...o,” she finally said. “But I’d like some warning before you, um, go between my legs.” It had taken her years---centuries, even---before she’d managed to reclaim that particular part of her anatomy as her own.

“Okay.”

“What about you? Should I...”

To her surprise, Bismuth actually hid a giggle behind her fingers. “Just don’t mess up my hair.”

She let loose a laugh, and playfully yanked at one of the locs. “Oh, stars forbid!”

“Please,” she said in a much quieter voice, “Keep touching me.”

It was like she was pulled by a force greater than herself, seized like metal to a magnet. Pearl nudged her knee between Bismuth’s legs and shuffled forward, pressing, pushing, until the blacksmith’s feet stumbled apart and that skinny thigh slid between hers. Pearl groaned... Oh, stars, she could feel Bismuth’s wetness even through her pants.

Pearl reached down and fondled where she assumed Bismuth’s chest to be. The feel of firm pecs was expected, but the tiniest swell of flesh above them a surprise. She nudged the straps of her apron to the side, and audibly sucked her breath in when she suddenly felt a large, puffy areola under her thumb. Pearl yanked away and stared, dumbfounded, as Bismuth shimmied her apron over her head.

She folded it and laid it on the rock Pearl had been perched on earlier, and for a second a dangerous kind of murkiness darkened her face as she lightly touched the bulge in the pocket. But she shook it off and turned her gaze back to Pearl. 

The shocked, gaping expression made her smirk. She fingered her still-clothed crotch, and then trailed her hand up to her bare torso, hovering over the fat bud of her nipple until it tightened under her fingernail. “See something you like?”

“Y... you have _breasts?!_ ” Pearl squawked in disbelief. 

“Mm-hm,” Bismuth said as she gave her diminutive chest a tweak. “We can’t all be as stacked as you, princess.”

“I...” She coughed, and nervously cleared her throat. She’d never seen Bismuth topless before, and had always presumed that whatever lay underneath her clothes was just another smooth expanse of muscle. But now that she was staring down at those soft, billowy little tits, each one rising up into a dusky-grey point... her gut lurched with desire and her mouth watered. Before she could stop herself, her head bobbed down of its own accord and she took the left one into her mouth.

“Gyahh!” Bismuth seized the back of her head in the crook of her arm and leaned down into the hot, piercing feeling of lips and wet teeth on her sensitive nipples. “Ah, Pearl, fuck!”

Pearl’s hands reached up, and she picked both tiny breasts up in her cupping palms. They fit perfectly. She moved her mouth to Bismuth’s neck and arced her back as they went fumbling across each other, petting and patting and getting all tangled up.

They just stayed like that for several long minutes, skin sliding over sweaty skin, Pearl’s slender thighs spread wide and curled around Bismuth’s big, thick trunks. When Bismuth pulled off of their kiss, she widened her mouth and inched her teeth over Pearl’s throat. “Oooh, I could just eat you up,” she groaned against her neck. “You taste like the sea.”

“Kiss me,” Pearl whispered, guiding her head down. She clearly heard Bismuth whimper when her outfit disappeared in a glimmer of light. “Kiss my breasts.”

She was more than happy to oblige. Flickering her tongue-tip over the stiff nub of her nipple, she opened her mouth and took the whole thing in, suckling wetly as she nursed. When it melded into the warmth, she plucked her mouth off he suck-bruised breast and moved to the other one.

She pushed her face up against Pearl’s clavicle, and trailed her tongue around the little hollow she found there. Oh, stars, she smelled like the silvery air after a downpour. Bismuth never wanted to admit to it, but there had been times she’d thought of her---never when she was with Emmie, of course, but every now and then when she’d let her own hand slip between her thighs, she’d allowed herself a few fleeting thoughts of Pearl---Pearl, her shining eyes, her pretty legs, the way her toes curled when she got flustered.

She let her pursed lips run down that pale torso; after fluttering some light kisses against her ribs, she looked up, her eyebrows cocked, questioning. The last thing she wanted to do was force her.

Pearl’s sweet face was flushed, sweaty, and she nodded, trying not to mewl. Despite Bismuth’s earlier protest, she fisted her locs and yanked. “Bismuth, your... your kisses... Lower. My legs---”

Bismuth intuited what she was really asking for, and kissed down to her belly. She hesitated for a moment, her chin skimming over the fluffy mons. “You ready for this, sweetie?”

“Yes,” she said, sucking her breath through her teeth. “I asked---Bismuth, do it, do it!”

She ducked her head down between her legs and paused, taking in what was before her with a tight yearning in her throat. Stars, she was exquisite, but then again, what else had she expected? Like most pearls, she only had a slight dusting of hair, as soft and downy as a dove; a suggestive sliver of pink blushed out from between her plump outer lips, topped with a clear bead of liquid glittering like a sequin.

She wiped her mouth. “ _Oh my holy fuck_.”

As much as she wanted to just sit and stare at that perfectly-blossomed flower, she forced her eyes closed and smushed her face against it. Thoughts of her fallen beloved were still dancing in her head, no matter how hard she tried to swat them away, and she kept thinking about how Emmie’s pussy was--- _had been_ \---an outie, with huge, wilting lips that hung down in delicate curls from her pubic hair; taking such a trim little cunt into her mouth was something entirely new.

And it felt _so good._

Pearl let out a trilling cry as her friend---her _lover_ \---caressed her lips up and over the gentle furl of her sex. Her labia pouted out and met Bismuth’s tongue as she gave her a big, wet, smacking kiss. “Bismuth, Bismuth _please!_ ”

Bismuth fumbled her mouth around, not knowing exactly what to do, but as she bobbed her head, tonguing the rosy folds of her vulva, she found her rhythm, listening to Pearl’s whines. A slurp up and down made her cry out, and sucking from side to side wrenched moans from her throat. She was so used to taking big fat lips into her mouth that licking around these graceful, tiny frills made her feel like a virgin all over again...

Trickles of her excitement were shining on her cheeks, and as Pearl ground her hips down on her face she eagerly lapped up the peppery streams. It wasn’t long before she felt that glassy clit stiffening just under her nose. The firm, iridescent little nub was jutting out like the tip of an iceberg, and she couldn’t help but plant a couple of kisses against it. It was _so_ small, and yet she somehow managed to get her lips around it. It felt like a grain of rubber, slipping in and out of her sucking mouth, and she gasped each time it bounced out and hit her chin or her nose. She used the soft underside of her finger to push at it, grinning when Pearl made huge, lewd howling sounds. 

As she thumbed the translucent hood, Bismuth pulled away to take another look. Pearl’s vulva had bloomed open from the attention, wet and flossy and beckoning. She could get lost in there, she just knew it. Just as she was pressing her face forward again, tongue extended to get a deeper taste, she heard Pearl’s quiet voice from above her:

“Bismuth, stop.”

She had to pry her face away from that sweet, soft heat. “Huh? What?”

“Let’s...” She dabbed the sweat from her brow and hugged herself, smiling and drumming her fingers on her elbows. “Let’s change positions,” she said as she made a twirling motion with her hand. “Go. Lie on your back.”

When she realized what Pearl meant, a cold, creeping worry shivered through her. Of all her lovers, she’d only let a select few touch her _that_ way. Old, stained memories and that familiar dread they brought would spike up inside her anytime someone’s hand---or anything else---came near. Besides, she wasn’t an idiot---she knew she was ugly. She’d heard the jokes. _What do Bismuths do right after they get laid? They pay._ One particularly nasty Corundum had taken one look and laughed, telling her she’d never ‘go slogging through that swamp’. And now this comely little Pearl wanted to flop ontop of her and stick her nose down there? She didn’t know if she could bear the thought.

“You sure?” she mumbled as she scratched the back of her neck.

Light as a feather, Pearl sat on her lap and gathered Bismuth’s hair in her dainty fingers. “Of course I am,” she breathed out as she tickled her face with her long eyelashes. She ran her thumb over Bismuth’s pounding jugular, and then leaned down to give it a kiss. At the same time, she let her free hand meander down the ropes of muscle covering her spine until it came to rest on her waistband.

Then she bit down, laving her tongue over Bismuth’s skin.

“I want this,” she continued, one finger toying its way into the back of her pants. “I want to take care of you.”

Her whole body bowed forward as Pearl dipped two fingers into the cleft of her ass. “Ah! _Pearl!_ ”

With her free hand between Bismuth’s flat breasts, fingernails tapping the edge of her gem, Pearl firmly pushed against her until she sprawled back on the pumice-littered ground.

She stared up at the murky sky, tight breaths puffing in her throat, as she felt Pearl tugging the coarse fabric from her waist, over her hips, down her thighs. One by one, she lifted her feet to allow her to pull her pants off completely, and shifted her boots away without being asked. The bridge of Pearl’s nose ran up her calf, and Bismuth slammed her eyes shut.

 _No, it’s okay,_ she said to herself. _I trust her. I trust her._

Pearl kissed her knee, then up her thigh, using the pads of her fingers to rub soothing circles into the trembling flesh she felt there. She scooped one arm around Bismuth’s leg and placed the other one palm-down on her belly, right above her pubic bone, and lightly licked the fuzzy crevice where her thigh met her body.  
Bismuth groaned when she felt Pearl’s thumbs press in on either side of her pussy; a gust of stale air left her chest, and she worried her lip between her teeth, without an ounce of courage to look down at her. “Uh... how do I look?”

She used her thumbs and forefingers to part the thick curls, and then the lips hidden underneath. They were shiny and surprisingly small, cinereous where they folded in pleats but thinned to a more gauzy consistency around the bulging clit. Of all the many, _many_ different laps she’d had her face in over the millennia, she’d never seen one quite like this. She didn’t even know that a vulva could be so dappled with freckles.

Her voice came curling up her throat. “You’re beautiful.”

She gave the clit a feathery nibble, tittering when it made Bismuth’s legs jolt, and then sent her lips dragging up and around her sex. She kept her kisses to the outside, but occasionally let her tongue-tip dart between her labia to tease around her entrance. _Kiss, kiss, lick, kiss, lick, lick..._ By the time she let her nose rub against her clit, Bismuth’s teeth were firmly embedded in her knuckles.

Pearl withdrew, dipping her lips into her mouth for a taste, and admired her handiwork. Two, maybe three minutes of attention and she was absolutely _sodden_.

Bismuth propped herself up on her elbows and peered down. “Why’d you stop?”

Smiling, Pearl looped a swirl of multicoloured hair between her fingers. “I want to try this from a different angle.” 

She rose to her feet. Although she pretended to be demure as she swept the grit from her elbows and knees, she made to sure to angle her body _just so_ , to move and sigh and bounce on her heels _just right_ ; she knew she had an eager audience, and didn’t want the show to disappoint.

Straddling her barrel chest proved to be more difficult than she’d expected. She was surely flexible enough to do it, but accidentally kneed her in the eyeball on the first try. In her flustered attempt to readjust, her sweaty palm slid off Bismuth’s waist and she rammed her sharp nose into her leg. They scrabbled around, half-laughing and half-apologizing, and Pearl ended up plunking her wet sex down _right_ on Bismuth’s gem, which made her shriek in an [o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNgvzxRCyQU)ctave most sopranos couldn’t reach. 

Startled, she slipped again, but Bismuth was there to catch her. “Okay! Okay! Stop squirming! I don’t wanna get whacked again!”

“I’m sorry, I---” And her heel went into her ribs.

She put a hand to her forehead, laughing up at the sky. “Dam _nation_ , Pearl, why are half your body parts pointy?”

Bracing herself on Bismuth’s thighs, Pearl rested her elbows against her hipbones and pressed her sheepish smile against her lover’s skin. “I swear I’m not usually this clumsy.”

“Mmm... It’s fine, princess,” she said with a playful smack on her ass. “It’s a nice view... even though I can’t see out of one of my eyes anymore.”

“Oh, stop it,” she replied with an answering slap. “I didn’t hit you that hard. You... _Ah!_ ”

Her sentence trailed off into a contented purr when she felt Bismuth’s callused fingers scudding along her spine; they came to rest on her tailbone, and, shyly, she petted in little circles along the outskirts of her pussy. When she engulfed her ass in one big hand, she barely had to press down---Pearl knew what she wanted.

Shifting her weight knee to knee, she lowered her hips until her smooth lips kissed Bismuth’s, her little button nose pressing at the bottom where her labia met in a bundle of flesh. Pearl crooned, chin to her chest, savouring the feeling of a tongue sliding up inside her, along her walls, past her defenses, for the first time in _ages_.

“Please,” she murmured as she flexed her legs, riding up and down on her warm, full tongue, just chanting over and over again “Please, please, _please_.”

And then with a slinking, quiet whisper, that old, oxidised part of her mind spoke up: _Don’t be selfish. It’s not about you. Don’t leave her hanging._

Pearl gasped and weakly flopped forward, muddling around with her hands and face until she felt the tickles of damp pubic hair. Peering through sticky eyelashes, she dug around until she had those heather-coloured lips parted between her fingers, and she dove in, burying her face as she feasted.

Bismuth’s mouth was too occupied to form coherent sentences, but Pearl’s keen ear was trained on the moans and cries that went vibrating up her cunt. Belly-to-belly, her cheeks squeezed between strong thighs, she could feel each clench of anticipation, so she didn’t push too far too fast---when she first tried to slide a finger inside she heard a pitiful whimper, so the edged back out and waited until Bismuth’s taut muscles relaxed. Pearl tapped there again, and again she stiffened up, but this time she heard a muffled “ _Mm-hm!_ ” It took her a few more tries, but she was patient, and finally got up to the knuckle inside her. Something told her that, while she may not have been the first to venture there, she may have been one of the first to do so with permission.

When she hooked her finger, that wonderful, musky smell grew and filled her nose with memories of midnight bonfires made with young, green wood. Pearl sighed, lapping up what she could. She wanted to pinch that hefty clit between her knuckles and keep it there forever. She wanted to kiss every little freckle. She wanted... oh, fuck she wanted to _come!_

If Bismuth was a bit reticent about receiving, she had no such compunctions about giving, and before long she had Pearl teetering on the thin, honeyed line between desire and desperation. Pearl lifted her face only long enough to utter out some faint words, little pleas and requests as she rocked her pelvis back and forth, trying to keep her button between Bismuth’s lips even as the muscles in her thighs tightened in excitement. She nodded her head again and kept trying to slither her tongue around her clit. She gulped when she felt it begin to pulse, so she started pounding her curled finger; the slippery walls around it were scalding, threatening to suck her in, and she dared to slip another two inside.

By now they were rocking around so hard that Pearl’s wet hair was slapping her cheeks and her gem, droplets of sweat and slick flying from the tips. She loved and hated that ache that came before an orgasm, and she tried her best to convey her need down her body, undulating ontop of Bismuth and rubbing down on her face with a new kind of franticness, moaning as she listened to the lusty sounds of her sucking and snuffling. One of her huge fingers was teasing between her cheeks, spreading her wetness up there, and Pearl nearly sobbed out loud from the sweet friction. With lips, nose, and fingers, she went digging through the sopping bush below her, rubbing her thumbs against the ring of muscle she found just inside.

When Bismuth suddenly started tapping against her knee, Pearl let her clit slip out from between her lips; she was about to turn around to ask what was wrong, but didn’t get the chance---her hips bucked up, so hard it nearly threw her off, and the next thing Pearl knew her whole head was squashed between Bismuth’s legs. Even with her ears nearly crushed against her skull she could hear a scream from behind her, and her mouth was flooded with a hard, spurting gush.

She grinned, quite proud of herself, and delicately massaged her inner walls until the spasms slowed to contractions, and then, after a final shudder, Bismuth’s legs went slack, splaying out lazily under Pearl’s body.

“ _Mmm._ ” Pearl lifted herself to a kneeling position and smirked as she slowly withdrew her hand. It was dripping, and still joined to her lover’s cunt with a thin strand of something stickier. “Don’t stop now!” she called as she wiped her fingers off on the side of Bismuth’s hip. “I’m almost there!”

Her toes were curling and uncurling, but as far as she could tell, that seemed to be the only movement she could sense. After having gouged her fingers into Pearl’s calves during her orgasm, she’d just let her arms flop down to her sides. 

“Do you... do you need a breather before you finish me off?” she said with a bit of annoyance.

When that got no response, Pearl peeled herself off the still body below her and rolled to the side. “Bismuth?” she said as she crawled up to her face. “Bismuth?”

As miffed as she was, she chuckled a bit when she looked down at her face. Despite her earlier promise, she’d definitely messed up her hair---it was ragged and zigzagging in all directions, one red dreadlock plastered to her cheek. Her mouth was hanging open, the tip of her tongue lolling out the side, and her eyes were closed in bliss.

“Bismuth,” she said again, poking her. “Hey. Hey! Bismuth! HEY!”

Pearl balled her hands into fists and growled in irritation. Stars above, she was out cold.

She put her head down on her breast, nose against her gem, and pulled one of her arms around her tiny frame. “Well. I guess I don’t have to ask if it was good,” she grumbled as she slipped her hand between her legs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have you found the Easter Egg yet?
> 
> I wasn't sure whether or not to make Bismuth a stone butch here, but decided to go with her being a bit reticent because of various past issues. And I do love a slightly Domme Pearl. :)


	3. Bismuth's Nightmare

_Something was wrong._

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how long it took me to update! Next chapter won't take nearly that long, I hope!
> 
> Comic transcript:  
> "What the... what is this place? Where am I?"  
> "Oh... Oh stars no..."  
> "Wait---I can hear someone crying."  
> (sobbing sounds in background, followed by someone saying 'Bismuth' several times)  
> "Is someone there? Hello? Who's calling me? I'm right here!"  
> "Emmie! Oh, Emmie, sweetheart, I thought I'd lost you!"  
> "...why aren't you looking at me? What happened? Who did this to you?"  
> "You did!"


	4. Bankrupt

_YOU DID YOU DID you did you didyoudid..._

Under the roiling of the void, under the screaming, both hers and Emmie’s, she could hear another voice; it was calling to her, pulling her from whatever darkness she’d fallen into, and as it grew stronger and stronger it began to slice through the remnants of her vision like a scythe: “Bismuth! Bismuth, what is it?”

She hadn’t realized she was waving her arms around until delicate fingers wrapped around her wrists and did their best to bring her to a standstill. Bismuth blinked, gasping, but even through the hot tears burning her eyes, she instantly recognized the gem in front of her. “ _Pearl!_ ”

She didn’t think twice, and tackled her in a crushing hug. “Oh, Pearl, Pearl, you’re okay!”  
“I’d... be... better if you weren’t trying to smother me,” she grumbled good-naturedly. She wriggled and tried to wrench an arm out from the embrace, with little success. “You were screaming.”

“Pearl.” She was petting through her ruffled curls and fumbling little kisses out between words: “Pearl, you were---everyone was---I saw---”

It was hard to return any of the affection with her arms pinned to her sides, but Pearl managed to brush her hands across Bismuth’s ribs. “Shh, shh. You’re babbling.”

With a shuddering sigh, she finally pulled back and took Pearl’s face in her hands, her eyes flitting around anxiously. “You... are you okay, sweetie?” she said carefully as the side of her thumb touched her gem. Thank the stars, it was solid. Unbroken. The slightly-baroque* shape to it was the only flaw she could see... if she could even bring herself to call it that. 

Her lips thinned a bit. “As ‘okay’ as I can be after watching you thrashing about and screaming like you were being tortured. Would you care to explain what that was about?”

Bismuth pulled her hands back, only a little shakily; as Pearl waited for her to gather her scattered thoughts, she raised her hand to the blacksmith’s face and gently wiped the gumminess from the corners of her eyes, the sweat from her brow, the little fleck of spittle on her lip. She wasn’t trembling anymore, but there was a worrisome tightness about her expression.

“Pearl, I-I... I can barely describe it.” 

She ghosted her fingers across Bismuth’s forehead, and gingerly touched the sticky dreadlock she’d picked off her cheek a few minutes ago. “Try.”

“I saw you _dead!_ ”

”What?!”

“You were dead, Pearl! I saw it!” She was flicking her hands around as if trying to grasp for words. “You were in little splinters, and, and Rose was---I saw everyone smashed to bits, they were all in bubbles, these disgusting, dripping bubbles, and---”

“Okay, alright, slow down,” she began, her thumbs rubbing soft circles in her tense shoulders. “Just go back to the beginning.” She tilted her head, but didn’t stop her easy kneading. “You, um, ‘saw’ me... dead?”

“Stars, Pearl, you were shattered. Everyone was.” A lone tear trickled down to the corner of her mouth, and she licked it away absent-mindedly. “E-Emmie was there.”

Pearl glanced to the boulder just beyond Bismuth’s line of vision, where her apron was still lying, rumpled. With a slow, steady gulp, she made her mind up not to tell Bismuth that she’d considered secretly bubbling the shards away while she was unconscious. “Um. Okay. You saw Emmie. Was she...?”

“Dead? No.” Another tear, another lick. “But she might as well’ve been.”

Shifting so she was sitting right next to her, Pearl leaned her body against Bismuth’s and looped her arm as far as she could around her wide back. “What does that mean?”

And, just like that, all of the panic she’d shown at the barricade came crashing back down, twisting and distorting her features. Though adrenaline was pounding up her throat, Pearl was on her in an instant, alternating from petting her hair to stroking her neck, dusting little kisses on her cheeks and whispering in her ear, over and over, “Shh. You’re safe, darling. You’re safe now.”

Burying her face in her neck, Bismuth wrapped her arms around Pearl’s waist and ran her fingertips down her spine, feeling every little bump and ridge. A sob clutched at her vocal chords, and she tightened her grip; she had to remind herself that this was real. That Pearl was real, that she was really here beside her, that she was unharmed. “It was horrible,” she eked out in a pinched little voice so different from her usual contralto. “Worse than a corruption---she was still in there. She was still Emmie, but she was... in pieces, I... she was _screaming..._ ”

“It was probably just your imagination playing tricks on you.” She shivered a bit as her friend’s caresses tickled on her bare back. “Crazy Lace thinks she sees things out of the corner of her eye all the time, and it always turns out to be nothing.”

She snorted. “Oh, yeah, sure. Compare me to Crazy Lace. _Crazy-fucking- Lace_. That makes me feel a _lot_ better.”

“I’m just trying to help, Bismuth,” she sniffed, but didn’t pull away. 

“Aw, Pearl, I’m sorry,” she mumbled with a grimace. “I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just...”

“Not thinking clearly,” she finished for her.

It took some cautious, wary movements, but Pearl managed to extricate herself from the tight grip her friend had on her. They just stared at each other for a moment; then, pulling her knees to her chest, Bismuth tugged Pearl a little closer, her huge arm engulfing the smaller gem’s slender form, and rummaged around until she found her hand. “What if she was trying to tell me something?”

“She wasn’t,” Pearl replied with a quiet firmness.

“But what if---”

She closed her eyes, cutting her off. “Bismuth, I’m sorry to have to say this to you right now, but Emmie. Is. Dead. She’s **gone**. She can’t be ‘telling’ you anything.”

“But the humans seem to think there’s something beyond this!” 

Pearl had a rebuttal fresh on her tongue, but the sudden look of optimism---or what could have been a fearful kind of longing---shimmering in Bismuth’s eyes gave her pause.

“See? You know I’m right! I can see it on your face!” She clapped her hands once, laughing. “They believe in an afterlife. Some of them have even seen---seen---damn, what do they call them again? Spirits? Dead humans who come back!”

Pearl made a dismissive little noise. “Humans also think they live on a flat disc. They’re not exactly enlightened.”

As soon as those nasty words had spilled forth, she felt the need to bite them back---but she was surprised when Bismuth just cocked her head, a sly grin playing about her mouth.

“They made it this far without technology, didn’t they?”

She ducked her face behind her hand, but couldn’t hold back the giggle. “Well, you may have a point there.”

“Humans wouldn’t paint spirits on cave walls if it was just a big waste of time,” she said as she aimlessly drifted her fingers through her hair. “They might be onto something. Why else would I have seen Emmie if it wasn’t for---”

Oh, no. No, she just couldn’t let her go down that path without interrupting. “Bismuth. You were unconscious; you couldn’t control what was going through your mind. It was just misfiring synapses.”

Her expression, blooming with the beginnings of hope, turned into a confused frown. “I... was asleep?”

A wry smile curled the side of her mouth. “Oh yes. You were out like a _light_ as soon as you came.”

Bismuth sat in silence for a moment. Then she slowly looked down at her own naked body, then at Pearl’s, then back up again. She flushed with colour as she moved her lips from side to side, not quite meeting her eye. “Did I, um, bring you... to... did you...?”

She made quite a show of examining her fingers as she rubbed them together. “No, and yes. I came quite well _on my own_ , while you were snoring away, thank you very much.”

“Pearl, I-I’m sorry,” she spluttered, horrified, “I should’ve---you---I didn’t mean to---”

With that light, easy laugh that Bismuth loved so much, Pearl draped her arm around those dusty shoulders and pulled her closer. “Oh, don’t you worry. I’m just giving you a hard time.”

She planted a sweet kiss on her cheek, but Bismuth’s anguish just seemed to twist deeper. What she said next made an old worry rise up inside her: “Pearl... should we have done this?”

Her fingers traced the tense line of Bismuth’s neck. “What are you talking about?”

She let out a startled “Eep!” when she suddenly felt herself being swept up, and gasped, wriggling in her friend’s strong grasp, when she felt those thick, rough lips dusting along her collarbone. “Pearl,” she was whispering, “Pearl, oh, _sweetie_... I just... I-I took you down in the dirt!”

She put one hand to Bismuth’s forehead, the other on her lips, but she couldn’t push her away nor stop what seemed like an incontinent gush of words: “This should have been something special for you, sweetie, it should have been somewhere nice---a bed, with real silky sheets, some candles---not like this, no, not like _this!_ ” 

“Bismuth...”

Pearl nearly choked when Bismuth smashed their bodies together, throat-to-throat. “I just treated you like any other gem would treat a pearl,” she was saying in a shivering voice. “I just grabbed you and took you like a whore! I can’t believe I was so selfish, I---”

She slapped both hands on either side of her face. “ **Bismuth!** ”

It took some twisting and turning to get her to meet her eye, but when she finally managed it, Pearl leaned down, touching the tip of her nose against her lover’s. “Stop it,” she snapped. 

“But---”

“No buts,” she said firmly. “Bismuth, listen to me: I wanted it. I welcomed it. _I **consented.**_ Do you hear me?”

She nodded numbly.

Pearl let her thumb move to the side and brushed away the first traces of tears. “What we just shared... it was beautiful.”

Bismuth’s grip slackened, and Pearl slid down to her lap. She was still cradling her face in her hands. “You mean so much to me,” she breathed out. Something was bubbling up inside her, something a pearl should never feel, never say. “And... I...” Her lips were pressed, her eyelids squeezed, but she still---somehow---forced the words out of her throat: “I love you, too.”

The laugh that came rumbling out of Bismuth’s chest was unexpected. “Emmie was _so_ damn jealous of you!” she chuckled as she trailed her hands up Pearl’s spine.

Immediately she pulled back, her eyebrows cocked. “What?!”

There was a soft, warm look on Bismuth’s face, like melting frost. “She knew I always had this little crush on you. She thought she could never measure up.”  
She couldn’t believe it. She just couldn’t believe it. Emmie’s gem was chipped, and she was inherently flawed, but... stars, she’d been so pretty. Even with her disability, she’d kept the clear, smooth, soft features of her aristocratic caste. Pearl bit her lip, and guilt twinged inside her, hard and hot and painful, as she remembered the resentment she’d always felt towards Bismuth’s lover for her uncomplicated beauty. 

And... Bismuth had a _crush_ on her?!

A rugged hand was slowly tracing up her belly, and Pearl snapped out of her self-indulgent reverie when she felt big, work-worn fingers on her breast.   
“Pearl,” Bismuth murmured, and she yanked her closer. Pearl made an undignified squeaking noise when the crux between her legs brushed against the firm abdomen in front of her, and her wordless mewls turned into keening when the sparse little flecks of her own pubic hair tickled against Bismuth’s curls.

Her legs ached from being spread so far apart, but she pushed up and against her lover, hands on her shoulders, breast-to-breast, trying as hard as she could to grind her dampening pussy up, down, against something, _anything_. Her tiny clit was just starting to bud out, and she suddenly wanted so desperately to crush it against Bismuth’s. She moaned when she thought of how good that would feel, that big, thick, freckled clit pressing down on her little nub, their wet lips pressed together in an impossibly intimate kiss...

Her eyelids were fluttering, and she seized her whole body against her lover’s, sending little lovebites up and down her neck; one hand was twisting deep into her locs, and other winding up her chest, and she was almost there, almost scooping up that precious breast in her palm---

\---when, all of a sudden, Bismuth threw her back down.

“Wha---?!” she squawked, trying to regain her composure. As she forced herself into a sitting position, the look of indignation on her face startled away when she saw pure panic in the blacksmith’s eyes. “Bismuth?”

She threw her hands in the air, and then went scrambling toward the rock she’d draped her apron over. “CLOTHES!” she screamed as she threw it over her head. “Pearl, clothes, dammit!”

And then she heard it---the glimmering of a warp pad, and pounding footsteps.

SHIT!

Her uniform was back on in a split-second, and she went rushing up behind Bismuth; her hands were shaking so hard she barely managed it, but somehow she got the bands of her belt between her fingers, and tied them in a bow so tightly Bismuth let out a choke. Just in time, too---

“Biz?”

Her face split open in a terribly insincere grin, pretending she didn’t notice Pearl’s balletic leap to the side. “Oh! Uh! H-heey, S-Snowflake!” she stuttered, nervously adjusting her straps. One was twisted, and she tried not to hiss when she felt it slide back over her exposed nipple.

The huge obsidian had her hands stuffed in her pockets, her dusky eyes on the ground. “...You been awhile,” she said, but there was no hint of accusation in her voice.

“Yup.” She slid her eyes to the side, and blew out a nervous breath when she saw that Pearl was fully dressed. 

It didn’t matter, anyway--- Snowflake still hadn’t looked up. “Saf’ told me you were, uh, kind of... having a hard time.”

“Uh. Um. Yeah. I... I was.”

“She’s doing much better now, though,” Pearl ventured as she squeezed her hands behind her back, trying to still the shaking. Snowflake slowly brought her eyes up to meet Pearl’s, and, hoping it would sell the lie better, she gave her a wide smile. “She just needed some, um, comforting.”

She wasn’t sure at first why Snowflake was staring at her mouth instead of her eyes, but she quickly cleared it up: “Pearl, you have something in your teeth.”

“I do?” Closing her lips, she moved her tongue around until she found what Snowflake had noticed first, and... even though she didn’t have internal organs, she could swear she felt something cold and grimy drop into her gut.

For a moment, Pearl wondered how she could have come to this. Never in her life did she think that she---the dignified, austere, _respectable_ Pearl---would end up staring at her new lover and her somewhat-judgmental colleague with a blue, blushing face and a **god-damned multicoloured _pubic hair_ in her teeth!**

Nervously sucking at it, she thanked her lucky stars that obsidians weren’t too quick on the uptake. “Why would you have something in your teeth?” she asked with complete innocence. “Were you eating?”

“BWAHA---!”

Bismuth just barely managed to clap her hand over her mouth, but the strain of keeping her laughter in nearly made her double over. “Sorry!” she wheezed. “I just... remembered... a joke!”

“Well... you do seem to be in better spirits,” Snowflake said slowly, eyeing her up and down. Pearl took the opportunity to turn away and frantically dig her nail between her teeth. “I guess everybody grieves in different ways.”

Bismuth’s smile dissolved. “Yeah. Um, can we maybe not talk about Emmie right now? I just kind of poured my heart out to Pearl, and I don’t think I can do that again for awhile.”

Snowflake was scratching at her throat, right where her cravat met her skin. “Biz, buddy, I’m... sorry.”

She shrugged. “It’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t mean that. I wasn’t talking about Emmie.” She looked away, the white blotches on her dark skin flushing with colour. “I’m... sorry about what I’m about to do. Okay, Biz? I’m gonna do something really stupid.”

Bismuth opened her mouth, but it slammed back shut when her friend---her big, burly, butch friend---charged at her, tears beading at her eyes, and threw her hands around her shoulders. 

“Pearl!” she choked out from between Snowflake’s thick arms. “Look! Miss Big Tough-As-Nails herself is actually _hugging_ me!”

She just mumbled a “Mm-hm!” as she finally, _finally_ got that damned hair between her fingers and yanked it out. It stuck to her skin, and she disgustedly tried to wave it off.

“I’m sorry,” Snowflake hissed, tugging her closer. “You shouldn’t have had to see that. And I shoulda been there for you when you needed it, not just fobbed you off on Sapphire. And P...”

She’d moved her head slightly to speak into Bismuth’s ear, and for a moment their cheeks touched. That’s when Snowflake yanked back, startled, and just... stared.  
Just as Bismuth was extending her hand, about to ask if she was alright, Snowflake stuffed her fists back in her pockets, turned on her heel, and went plodding back to the warp pad. Pearl managed to flick the spit-soaked hair off her finger and took her place by Bismuth’s side, nervously looping her arm around her elbow. “What was that about?”

She snorted and waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, you know... There’s a reason she has ‘flake’ in her name. She was probably just having one of her ‘moments’.” She smirked a bit, bringing her hand to rest on her lover’s. “Besides, her face accidentally bumped into mine. You know how squeamish she is about being touched.”

She couldn’t stop smoothing her lips and tongue over her teeth. Gads, she felt so _dirty_ now. “You don’t think she put two and two together?”

“Look, she’s a great gem, but she puts things together with all the roaring speed of a _glacier_.” She laughed, squeezing Pearl’s fingers, as a sudden memory hit her: “She didn’t know ‘Emmie’ was short for ‘Emerald’ until three weeks ago, Pearl. Three weeks ago! She actually asked if her name was Emmanuelle, and I thought Emmie was going to piss herself laughing.”

She closed her eyes, still chuckling wistfully, and when she opened them again, they were wet. “She... she just... had such a sweet laugh...”

Oh no. Pearl stacked her free hand on top of Bismuth’s, and gently rubbed back and forth when she felt it trembling.

“And... I’m... I’m never going to hear it again...”

“Hey.” She tugged on her elbow, but gave her a moment to wipe her palm across the tears trickling down her cheeks. “Let’s get you back.”

~

Bismuth had mostly composed herself by the time they got back to the base, and had enough foresight to pull her hand out of Pearl’s sometime during the warp. The first thing she noticed---oddly enough---were Ruby and Sapphire, and she nudged Pearl to get her attention.

“Hey. Check it out, they’re still unfused.”

They’d been sitting cross-legged, giggling with each other, hands clasped and foreheads touching, but the sound of Bismuth’s voice caught Ruby’s attention. “YOU!”

Bismuth let out a hearty laugh when she saw the tiny gem rushing up to meet her, and got down on one knee so they’d be closer in height. “Hey there, Short Stack! Didja miss me?”

She was fully expecting a hug—so the gauntlet-enhanced fist to the face was quite a surprise. It was more from shock than the force of the punch that sent her sprawling on her back, and Ruby wasted no time in crawling up her body and seizing her apron straps in her shaking fists.

“IF YOU EVER, _EVER_ ATTACK MY SAPPHY AGAIN I WILL _PERSONALLY_ GRIND YOU INTO DUST AND THROW YOU INTO A BLACK HOLE!” she screamed, boiling spit shooting from her lips. “DO YOU HEAR ME, YOU OVERGROWN BLOB OF SLAG ROCK??”

Sapphire floated her way over, seemingly unconcerned. “Ruby. We talked about this.”

She pretended she hadn’t heard, and grabbed as big a handful as she could manage of her dreadlocks. Yanking her head up so they were eye-to-eye, Ruby twisted her face into a snarl and hissed “I will cut you. Don’t think I won’t cut you!”

“ _Ruby._ ”

They’d been together long enough that she understood the meaning behind That Tone, and so grudgingly slid down Bismuth’s arm and back to the ground. Even though she allowed Sapphire to take her hand and lead her away, she was still visibly shuddering with rage.

Pearl finally found her voice, and fell to her knees by Bismuth’s side. “Oh my goodness. Are you hurt?”

With a groan, she sat back up; after gingerly touching her nose and then checking her hand for blood, she shook her head. “Just... my pride.” She sheepishly grinned at her and made a little beckoning gesture; when Pearl leaned in closer, she added in a much quieter tone: “Can we, uh, just keep it between us that I got knocked flat on my back by a gem one-tenth my size?”

“Oh, of course, of course,” she murmured. Even though she was patting Bismuth’s arm, her eyes were on the two gems wandering away. When Ruby thought Sapphire wasn’t looking, she turned her head, pointed at her eyes, and then moved the two fingers towards the blacksmith. She finished the silent threat with a shake of her fist.

“I saw that,” Sapphire said mildly.

“Why are they still unfused?” Pearl whispered as she helped her lov.... her _friend_ up. When Bismuth smirked down at her, she just raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Why do you think?”

“I... I honestly have no id---”

“They’re going to _fuck_ , Pearl. They’re _fucking_.”

She tried not to laugh when Pearl’s hands flew to her mouth, her cheeks stained a deep blue. “B-Bismuth!”

“What? You know it’s true.” Her hand had been on the small of her back, but she decided to risk a quick pinch a little lower, and laughed out loud when Pearl tried to squeak back a shriek, her blush spreading across the bridge of her nose. “You’re so cute when you’re flustered.”

She pinched her back, but it was on the arm, and it wasn’t nearly as jovial; she looked genuinely angry and a bit afraid, and it took Bismuth a moment before she realized they weren’t alone.

“Snowflake!”

She usually wasn’t big on eye contact, but she was staring right at Bismuth now. No, not staring--- _glaring_. “You were gone almost an hour before I found you.”

“Yeah, I really needed to talk it ou---”

“What, exactly,” she said, almost spitting each word out, “Were you and Pearl doing?”

Pearl felt her belly flip, and turned away with a growing embarrassment. “’Speed of a glacier’, eh?” she whispered.

Bismuth’s gaze was wavering between the two of them, but she tried to force her eyes still. She couldn’t risk looking shifty now. “We, we were talking.”

Her namesake white spots constricted slightly; it was an involuntary movement, one of the first signs she was about to lose her temper. “What exactly were you and Pearl doing, Bismuth?”

That made her huff in a quick, worried breath. She honestly couldn’t remember the last time Snowflake had called her by her full name. “I told you. We were talking.”

“Yes, she needed someone to talk to!” Pearl added quickly, and caught her hand before she touched Bismuth’s. “And someone to listen. I was... comforting her.”

Snowflake eyed her coldly for a moment, then turned back to her friend, leaning forward ever so slightly. Her words were like acid: “Let me give you some free advice, you worthless piece of shit: next time you get someone to ‘comfort’ you? Wash your face afterwards. I could smell her stink on you.” Then she jerked her head away, waving her hand in front of her nose. “I can still smell it.”

Pearl watched, horrified, as all the colour drained from Bismuth’s face.

“Yeah, I figured it out. You thought I wouldn’t figure it out, didn’t you? You never had faith in me.” Snowflake turned, but before she left she gave one last parting shot: “And now I see I was wrong to ever have had faith in you.”

Pearl tried to grab at her, but Bismuth was already running after her. “No, Snowflake, wait! It’s not like that!”

She got her fingers around one of her coattails, and Snowflake whirled around with a contorted snarl of disgust. “Don’t touch me!”

“Listen, Snowflake, please just listen, I---”

“I did listen to you, and you lied!” She smacked away the outstretched hand. “Fucking Pearl three hours after Emmie died---You oughta be ashamed of yourself!”

Bismuth put her hands to her chest, pleading. “I am, trust me, I am! I am ashamed of it!”

A movement on the periphery of her vision made her turn to look, and Pearl was glad for the momentary distraction from what felt like having a white-hot dagger being stabbed through her core. Oh _no_. They were starting to draw a crowd.

“Good! I hope you feel that shame for the rest of your wretched life!”

“Snowflake, it just _happened!_ ” she said helplessly, her voice starting to sound tight with a threat of tears. “We didn’t mean anything by it!”

“You don’t just ‘accidentally’ eat someone out, idiot!” she screamed.

A few of the Amethysts who’d been lounging in the other room were now hovering a few feet away; Pearl couldn’t read lips, but she was good with facial expressions... and theirs were decidedly unpleasant. She whipped her head around, scanning the room---Crazy Lace had appeared from stars-knows-where, her hand on Biggs' shoulder, whispering something in her ear. Even Ruby and Sapphire had peeked their heads around the door. “Um. You, um, might want to keep your voices down---”

Snowflake jabbed a comminatory finger at her. “Don’t you talk to me, you bitch!”

“HEY.” Bismuth stepped closer. Her words were still strained, but now there was a very dark, unsettling look on her face. “Watch what you say to her.”

Snowflake’s gem was giving off a dull glow, pulsating out with frosty prickles. “Don’t defend her! You’re both defenseless! You’re morally bankrupt, and she’s a _whore_!”

When she heard Pearl’s choked gasp, she reached out and put a protective arm round her shoulders. “Your beef is with me, Obsidian. Leave her out of this.”

“Stop _doing_ that!” She was near-hollering by this point. Crazy Lace began to step closer, but her buddy wisely grabbed her back. “Stop touching her like that! She’s not your lover, Emmie is!”

“Leave _her_ out of this, too,” she growled. 

Snowflake got right up in her face, so close she could feel the heat coming off Bismuth’s body, smell the lingering spend on her lips. “Emmie was the best thing that ever happened to you, Bismuth. She saved your stupid ass when you got caught! You owe your life to her, and this”---she disgustedly flung her hand at Pearl---“Is how you repay her?”

Pearl knew she should pull back, but she just couldn’t let go of her when she felt a tremor go through her body. “You... are treading on VERY thin ice,” Bismuth hissed.

“What do you think she’d say if she was here, huh? Seeing you all cuddled up with that strumpet?” 

Finally, Bismuth took her arm off of Pearl, and discreetly motioned for her to step back. She did so gladly; there was something dangerously close to unbridled rage darkening her eyes. “Oh, you wanna know what she’d say? You wanna know?”

Before Snowflake could answer, Bismuth reached into her pocket. If she’d heard Pearl’s quiet _“Oh, Bismuth, no,”_ she didn’t let on. “Here, ask her!”

When she shoved the handful of shards at her, Snowflake’s countenance immediately changed to one of horror, and she shuffled backwards, the corners of her mouth twisting in revulsion. Bismuth took two steps forward for every one she took back, still waving the shattered gem in her face. “Ask her! Go on, ask her!”

Snowflake kept scooting away, but Bismuth wasn’t giving her an inch. “Bismuth, that’s disgusting!” 

Pearl winced when she heard a murmur of assent from their audience.

She pushed her hand right up under her nose, and accidentally bumped the tip with her finger. “You wanted to know, Obsidian! So ASK her!”

It was more of a reflex than anything---Snowflake’s hand darted out, and she hastily struck it against Bismuth’s, sending the shards flying across the room.

For one huge, stretching, horrible moment, there was only silence. Bismuth stared, mouth agape, at the scattered shards, and everyone stared at _her_ , waiting to see what she’d do.

Pearl was the first to react. “I-I’ll pick them up!” She got to her knees, and ignored every abominable roil of her stomach as she began plucking the broken bits of her former friend from the floor, dropping them into her outstretched skirt to reduce how long she’d have to be touching them with her bare hands.

When Bismuth turned back to Snowflake, there was absolute murder in her eyes.

“I d-didn’t m-mean to d-do that,” she stuttered as she shrunk into her shoulders. “You touched me, I---”

Bismuth didn’t give her time to finish. With a primal howl, she charged at her and clotheslined her onto her back. The two gigantic gems went sprawling head-over-head for a moment before Snowflake wrapped her legs around her waist and nearly wrenched her off, but Bismuth caught the left hook she was flinging and screwed it to the side. She raised her other hand over her head, curled it into a fist, and sent it smashing down into Snowflake’s mouth.

Pearl screamed.

Bismuth’s hair was whipping around, in her eyes, pelting her back, as she swung punch after punch into Snowflake’s face, not even flinching when a spray of blood flecked across her snarling teeth. One of the more impulsive Amethysts decided this would be a good time to be a hero, but Bismuth sent her flying when she tried to yank her back.

“Bismuth, stop!” Pearl yelled.

The gathered gems were beginning to get more vocal, too. “Stars, she’s going to kill her!”

“Someone pull her off!”

“Oh, hell no, not me! You saw what she did to Ripper!”

“Why is this happening?!”

“Oh shit, I can’t look. She’s breaking her teeth!”

Still clutching the hem of her skirt, Pearl nervously approached, but kept well out of the range of her fists. Small mercy she hadn’t shifted to hammers. “Bismuth, Bismuth, stop. It’s okay. Emmie’s right here. I have her.”

For the first time since the beginning of her assault, she paused her punching---just long enough to roar “PISS! _OFF!_ ”

That startled her so much that she scurried backwards, only stopping when she bumped into someone. She hadn’t been looking where she was going---she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the rather one-sided fight. Snowflake’s face was beginning to look like inky pulp.

“Pearl, what’s happening?” Rose said with a surprisingly quiet voice.

“They---she---” she spluttered. “Snowflake---it’s hard to explain--- Rose, NO!”

But she was already walking towards them. Before Pearl could come to her senses and dive in to save her, Rose shot her hand out and caught Bismuth by the wrist. “ ** _Stop it_**.”

There was something clear, concise, and cutting about her tone that snapped Bismuth out of her trance-like state, and she looked up at Rose through her gnarled hair, panting.

“Get up,” Rose said sternly. “Get off her.”

She didn’t release her wrist from her deceptively strong grip until she complied. It took her a few attempts, since she kept slumping back down, so Rose put her other hand on her elbow and helped her up. Sensing this was the time for action, four of the huddled gems around them rushed up and began doing what they could; one was wiping her sleeve over Snowflake’s face, tutting in dismay, the others trying to heft up her heavy, crumpled arms.

Still holding on to Bismuth, Rose nodded at them. “Thank you. Please get her to the fountain as soon as possible.”

With a grunt of effort or two they lifted her from the floor, one gem per limb, and started backing their way out the nearest door. “Last time I put my chips on Snowflake in a fight,” one of them muttered.

“Bismuth,” Rose said as she pulled her arm back, nursing her sore knuckles, “That was an incredibly cruel thing to do.”

“You don’t know what she did,” she mumbled, but something about her face showed that she agreed.

“It doesn’t matter what she did. You had no right to attack her like that.”

Bismuth pointed at the doorway. “Well---Well Ruby punched _me_ in the face, and I don’t see you going after _her!_ ”

“I didn’t see that, and I’ll deal with her later,” Rose replied, and spared a glance over Bismuth’s shoulder. She was just in time to see Ruby duck away, but Sapphire stayed, silently watching. Looking back at the blacksmith, she went on: “Don’t you think there’s enough violence in our lives right now without you needing to bring it back here?”

She looked down at her bloodied hands. “I-I...”

“Bismuth, these are your comrades. You can’t attack one of our own. You could have _shattered_ her.” 

Something about that word pricked up a flash of anger in her eyes. “Who are you to talk to me about fighting?”

Rose raised her eyebrows. “A friend. And, might I remind you, your leader.”

“Fine job you’re doing of it, too!”

Rose rarely lost her temper, but the way she pursed her mouth and knitted her brow was beginning to worry Pearl. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

Bismuth stared her down, and pushed her hair off her face. “You know what your problem is, Rose? You don’t know what you’re doing. We’re _losing!_ And it’s your fault!”

Pearl looked over at Sapphire, and even though her eye was hidden, she could tell they were sharing the same thought: _Uh-oh._

Her hands on her hips, Rose lifted her chin and leaned forward. “I know the battle today was a loss, but---”

“No! Don’t you hand-wave this away! I’m sick and tired of losing! And losing my friends!”

“I don’t think I like the tone you’re taking with me.”

“Fuck what you think! I can talk however I want!” There were tendons sticking out of her neck, and her hands were trembling, as if she was ready to change them into something even more deadly than her fists. “You think you can come in here and preach to me about being ‘cruel’? Well what’s more cruel than leading us into a war zone every fucking day knowing we’re all going to be mowed down?!”

“Please calm down.”

“I _CAN’T!_ ” She screamed it so loud her voice had gone hoarse, and Rose’s fringe blew back from the blast. “I just watched the love of my life being murdered right in front of me!!”

For some reason, that’s what cracked Rose’s iron grip on her temper. “Bismuth, we _all_ lost gems we loved today! You’re not special, so stop your pathetic, self-indulgent wallowing!” 

Without a second thought, Bismuth backhanded her with enough force to knock her to her knees.

For the first time in her entire existence, Sapphire cursed.

Pearl was on her in a second, not caring that she’d dropped Emmie’s shards in her hurry. “Oh Rose, Rose!” she cried as she seized her hand. “Did she hurt you? Are you alright?!”

After taking a moment to gather her thoughts---and possibly her anger---Rose pushed herself off the floor and lightly touched her cheek. “Thank you, Pearl. I’m fine.” When she looked up at Bismuth, who seemed to be the most startled of all of them, there was still some unpleasantness on her face, but she kept her words civil. “You will not disrespect me like that ever again. Calm yourself, and when you’re ready to act like a grown, civilized gem, I will come talk to you. You should be waiting in the mudroom. Now go.”

She took a hesitant step back, and her eyes drifted to Pearl’s face. She wasn’t sure what she saw there---anger? Fear? Whatever it was, she didn’t want to stare at it for too long. And she definitely didn’t want to be hanging around when the rest of the gems returned; she just couldn’t face them, not after having her dirty laundry aired in front of everyone.

...Everyone.

Snowflake had just screamed out what she’d done with Pearl in front of half their friends---and knowing how Amethysts could gossip, well, those who hadn’t been there to witness it would all know by daybreak. Everyone knew now. _Everyone_ knew.

Her face went dark with a shameful blush, and she wiped her hands on her apron. “I’m.... I’m sorry,” she mumbled, and turned to run out of the room.

They watched her go, shoving both Ruby and Sapphire out of the way in her haste. When Pearl felt a soft hand come to rest on her cheek, she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Hey,” Rose said softly. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I...” How could she answer? Everything inside her just felt muddied and horrible. An hour ago, Bismuth had said she loved her. Fifty minutes ago, she’d been sucking on her sweet juices. Five minutes ago, she said she was _ashamed_ of it. “No!”

Rose placed her fingers under Pearl’s chin. “Did she force you at all?”

“No, no, no, it’s nothing like that, it’s... it’s...” She crumpled into those outstretched arms and buried her face in Rose’s enormous curls, sobbing. “She... she said she... loved me... I thought she meant it... I thought she _wanted_ me...”

Murmuring quiet nothings against her head, Rose stroked her fingers through Pearl’s hair and rocked her back and forth, just like she had done for Bismuth earlier. Her mouth opened in a silent ‘O’ of surprise when she saw Garnet stride up behind Pearl’s back; she squatted down, bubbled Emmie’s shards, and sent them off. Turning to Rose, she lowered her visor, which just surprised her even more---all of her eyes, the third one especially, were wide open with what looked like terror.

Future vision.

~

 

_*A baroque pearl is a pearl that isn’t perfectly spherical._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! So, Garnet had a vision about what might happen to Emmie's shards... hm, wonder what she saw.  
> And if you're wondering how Rose knew about Pearl and Bismuth's little affair when she came in the room _after_ Snowflake blurted it out, well, I have a feeling Ms. Quartz is the type to eavesdrop on her troops before making an entrance. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> And I’m sorry for the horrible ending to this one, but hopefully the next one will lighten the mood. More sin?


	5. Where Are You?

“Having fun?”

Bismuth’s head bobbed up, indicating that she’d heard, but she didn’t bother to look back at Pearl. “Oh, hell yeah. I just fucking love being on scrub duty,” she snapped as she tossed her brush back in the bucket.

“You say you love a lot of things,” she said coolly.

Bismuth sucked a sharp gulp of air through her nostrils, but she still refused to tear her eyes from the floor. “If you need to go outside, go through the living room. I don’t want you leaving dirty footprints all over two hours’ worth of work.”

Her arms crossed tightly over her chest, Pearl leaned against the doorframe and watched the muscles in Bismuth’s back moving under her skin. It looked more like she was strangling a wounded animal than doing a simple household chore. “Well, I hope you don’t tire yourself out,” she said with as much acidic nonchalance as she could feign. “It would be a shame if you _fell asleep_ before you got the job done.”

She could almost hear Bismuth’s teeth grinding as she brought the brush back down, scrubbing a furious circle in front of her. “Pearl, can you maybe take your hissy fit somewhere else? I’ve got things to do.”

“Then you might want to consider doing them correctly,” she noted as she eyed the path of bubbles Bismuth left behind her swiping. “You’re cleaning yourself into a corner.”

“What d...” She stopped assaulting the stain she’d been working on for the past five minutes and turned to look at her work. Yup, Pearl was right---the paths to both exits were covered in a shimmering film of clean water, and she was indeed stuck in a dirty corner. She threw the brush across the room in exasperation. “DAMMIT!”

Shaking her head, Pearl pushed her shoulder off the doorway, but she hesitated before she took her leave; unspoken words were stuck in her throat, like a plug holding down all the murky emotions inside her. The only thing she could get out was “...I’ll be right back.”

She fully expected Bismuth to be sulking in the corner when she returned, but was a bit impressed to see that she’d dried a path to the door and had gone back to work, angrily going at the grout with the rougher end of the bristles. She looked up with a scowl that quickly turned to shock when she saw Pearl had a bucket and a brush of her own. “Oh, no, Pearl, come on, you don’t have to...”

“We need to talk,” she stated simply, and sat down next to her without meeting her eye. She delicately dipped her tool into the sudsy water and then started to etch it against a dried blob of mud, occasionally picking at it with the edge of her thumbnail. Bismuth watched her for a minute before reaching back for her own bucket.

“You’re mad at me.”

Her nose scrunched up. In any other circumstance it would have looked adorable, but the tension on her face was so thick she could cut it with a knife. “Yes, Bismuth, I am very angry with you.”

She sighed. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

“You shouldn’t have beat on Snowflake!” she shouted, finally looking up at her with blazing eyes. “And you should _not_ have hit Rose!”

Bismuth stared at her, at the way her eyelids were fluttering, and wondered for a moment what they were really hiding. “You wanna tell me something I don’t know?”

She pursed her lips. “Do you know that, of all of our friends, only Garnet and Rose are currently speaking to me?”

“No,” she admitted, “But you got one up on me. Rose hasn’t said a word to me since she gave me the dressing-down.” She picked at the ground, chipping the veneer on the cheap tiles. “She’s... really got a way with words, I’ll give her that.”

Not sure how insulting that was meant to be, Pearl tried a different tactic: “Do you know that Snowflake actually _cried_ when she came to in the fountain?”

That startled her even more. “What, really?”

“Yes, really. She was inconsolable. The only thing she could say was _‘Why, why, why?’_ ” She hated to sound like a scold, but she’d never seen the obsidian in such a state. “The poor thing wasn’t able to leave her cubbyhole for hours.”

Bismuth looked down at her brush and traced her finger through the bristles, little flecks of water spitting from the tips. “She... she was probably just embarrassed that she lost a fight---”

“She doesn’t cry when she loses a fight! She cries when she loses a _friend!_ ”

The way she cringed, it looked like that had cut her just a bit too deeply.

“You hurt her feelings, Bismuth. You _know_ she doesn’t deal well with emotions, let alone the ones that come from being attacked by her best friend! And...” She drifted her hand through the water, popping a few of the bubbles; when the ripples on the surface smoothed back out, she watched her iridescent reflection droop into a darker sadness. “...And you really hurt me, too.”

Bismuth jolted. “What?!”

“You hurt me, Bismuth. You hurt me deeply.”

“How?!” She’d stopped washing the floor, and was staring straight at her, a looked of pained anger on her features. “Pearl, I stood up for you!”

“You said... that you were _ashamed_ of what we did,” she hissed through her teeth. The emotion squeezing her belly pinched sharply as those rough, barked-out words echoed in her head for what had to be the hundredth time.

Bismuth’s eyes flickered to the side, and it seemed like she was scrolling over the previous day in her mind, trying to pick that out of the tangled mess of screaming.

“Snowflake said ‘you oughta be ashamed of yourself’, and you said you were.” Pearl jabbed her finger at Bismuth’s shoulder, and she jerked away from the sharp tip of her nail. “You said that, Bismuth. And you told me to ‘piss off’, too.”

She pulled a hand over her face. “Aw, Pearl, I didn’t mean it...”

“Well how do I know that? How do I know you meant anything you said?”

“I just...” She was moving her hands around aimlessly as she stared down at the floor. The stain was still there. “I just... I mean... I...”

Pearl let her brush drop into her bucket. “Well. If you don’t even have the courage to face me, then maybe I shouldn’t be wasting my time.”

“Don’t be like that.”

The frustration curdling away inside her started to crawl up her throat. “I can ‘be’ however I want, Bismuth! I thought you of all gems would understand that!”

Her head rose, and Pearl could tell by the way the creases around her brows and lips that she was either going to yell at her---or say something far too quietly. She wasn’t sure which would be worse, so she decided not to even give her the chance.

“Should I leave you alone to pout, hm?” she sniffed as she pointed at the door behind her. “Do you want me to leave?”

“For fuck’s _sake,_ Pearl!”

She let out a thin gasp as Bismuth’s bulky hand enveloped her wrist, and she staggered forward from the strength of her yanking, slipping a little on the wet floor. _She... she wouldn’t hit me,_ she thought as she eyed her tense, twisted expression. _...Would she?_

“Listen to me!”

“You’re hurting my arm,” she whimpered.

“Shut up,” Bismuth grunted as she pulled her ever closer. “Just shut up, get your head out of your damn ass, and _listen_ for once in your life, willya?”

“I-I’m trying to listen!”

“No you’re not!” she roared, banging her free hand on the ground so hard her knuckles popped. “You’re just trying to lecture me! Well I’ve had”---bang---“Enough”---bang---“Lecturing!” _Bang!_ The tile cracked, and Pearl’s flesh went cold.

_She’s going to hit me._

Despite her centuries of training as a warrior, Pearl knew she was on the losing end of this showdown when it came to brute strength---hell, she’d seen what Bismuth’s fists could do to a gem three times her size---so she did the only thing she could think of: she jammed her hand, nails down, into Bismuth’s gem, pressing right between the ridges.

The hand gripping her wrist quivered just a little, and Pearl could swear she saw something change in Bismuth’s eyes, like a ripple coming up from deep in her soul. As they stared at each other, each holding a breath they’d never need, her grip loosened just slightly, and she shifted her fingers around, almost like a caress.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” Pearl whispered.

“Oh, for the love of all that’s holy! Can’t you two control yourselves?”

Pearl yanked her hand back with an undignified yelp, and they both startled when they saw who was looming in the back doorway.

“S-Snowflake!” Bismuth stuttered with a sudden, plastered- on smile. “You, uh. You’re... back!”

Snowflake, wearing a slightly different outfit now that she’d reformed, was drilling her narrowed eyes into Bismuth’s, daring her to look way. Inevitably, and abashedly, she did, glancing down at Snowflake’s twitching fingers, which were balling into fists and then uncurling again. She’d known her long enough to understand this was actually the _opposite_ of an intimidating gesture---the obsidian had trouble staying still when something was gnawing away at her. Their eyes met again, and Bismuth’s face flushed as she chewed on her lip.

“Yeah. I’m back. And I’m feeling _fine_ , so thanks for asking.”

Pearl covered her mouth with her hand, but still tried to smile around it. “What a coincidence! We, uh, we were just talking about you.”

“Mm. I bet you were.”

Bismuth’s gaze drifted from Snowflake’s glaring face, down to the floor, then back over to Pearl; her mouth was moving around, but it didn’t seem like she could figure out how to start putting her jumbled thoughts into words.

The malingering silence was starting to eat at Pearl, so, ever the peacemaker, she placed a soapy hand on Bismuth’s elbow and squeezed gently. “Snowflake, I think there’s something Bismuth would like to tell you.” She spared a glance between the two reticent gems before giving the blacksmith a nudge. “Isn’t that right, Bismuth? Hm?”

“I, um...” She began to rise, but decided in a hurry to stay on her knees when Snowflake balked at the motion. The fright on her friend’s face sent a little splinter of guilt stabbing inside her; stars, she could still feel that soft, dark skin splitting under her knuckles. “Look, I, I, uh, wanted to apol---”

“You missed a spot.”

Bismuth glanced down at her work, then back up. “Really? Where?”

Pressing her lips together, Snowflake stepped backwards off the top stair and onto the muddied ground below. She screwed her feet back and forth a few times, making sure they were as dirty as possible; then, with a look of grim determination, she slowly and deliberately walked across the clean floor, never lifting her eyes from the blacksmith’s. Once she made it across the room, she sucked and snuffled until she’d made a big enough glob of spittle, and then horked it onto the last dirty footprint. “Riiiiight _there_ ,” she sneered.

Bismuth just stared at her in shock---which quickly changed to rage when Snowflake put the cherry on top by flashing her a hand gesture that she must have learned from Biggs.

With an angry roar, Bismuth slammed her brush into the bucket and jumped to her feet. “ _Well I was **gonna** say sorry, Obsidian, but **now** you can just take that apology and shove it right up your---!_ ”

Pearl swiftly sprang up in the space between them, both arms extended... as if she could keep two gems that size at bay should they decide to charge toward each other. “Alright, now, tempers are running a little high here! So why don’t you both just take a deep breath and---”

In a way, she was glad that Snowflake slammed the door behind her; she hadn’t quite been sure how she was going to finish that sentence.

“I can’t fucking believe it!” Bismuth stuffed her fists into her hair and began tugging, her eyes all crumpled with distress as she stared at the soiled floor. “Did you see that? Did you see what she did?! That was _two hours of work!_ ”

“Of course I saw it,” Pearl said stiffly. Gingerly, she touched Bismuth’s knuckles and carefully extricated her thick fingers from her locs. “You, um, did kind of deserve it, though.”

“What? _Really?!_ ” Although she allowed Pearl to bring her hands back down to her lap, she wasn’t about to let go of her anger. “Are you siding with her? You’re cleaning this floor too, you know!”

Instead of answering, Pearl straightened her back and sighed, rubbing her temples. How could she get through to her? It felt like chipping at the magma billowing down a volcano’s side.

“I didn’t deserve it,” Bismuth growled. “I was _trying_ to apologize.”

She frowned, a hand on her hip. “You broke her teeth, Bismuth. You know how much it hurts to lose a tooth, don’t you?”

At that, Bismuth recoiled as if she’d been slapped, and something, some strange haze went floating across her face like a thundercloud, dark and thick and pregnant; for a moment her eyes changed---although they’d lost their focus, they were still darting about, as if re-watching shadowed memories, her knuckles clenched white and her lips peeled back with old recall. It was a countenance Pearl, unfortunately, found all too familiar.

“Oh my goodness. Are you... are you having a flashback?”

She didn’t reply, but she did snap out of it with something between a startle and a shiver. In a sullen silence, Bismuth pulled a washrag out from her pocket---the same pocket she’d used to hold Emmie’s shards---and dunked it in the grimy water. She didn’t even look as she swept it over one of Snowflake’s huge footprints, cupping the mud in her palm; even though her actions showed she was somewhat in the present, her eyes hadn’t quite caught up, and her tongue was moving inside her cheek as if poking at an old injury.

“I’m starting to get worried about you, Bismuth,” Pearl said quietly.

She shifted her weight to her other foot, watching as Bismuth twisted the cloth in her fists. Her whole face was pinched up---eyes closed, nose crinkled, mouth thinned and trembling. But now that Pearl had started, she felt she couldn’t stop; pulling a blade out of a boil halfway wouldn’t lance it.

“You’ve... you’ve  _changed_. You just have so much anger inside you now.”

She paused, but when Bismuth didn’t take the chance to snap something back, she kept talking. “Yes, you’ve always had a temper, but ever since you were captured---”

_“ **DROP IT!** ”_

As much as that startled her backwards, Pearl kept her footing; after a moment, she regained her voice, quieter but sharper than it had been before: “There! You see what I mean?”

She gazed down at her friend, who was hunched into herself with a hand pressing against her lips, as if she could push back her earlier cry.

“I’m your friend. You should be able to tell me anything,” Pearl said as she moved just a bit closer, the tips of her slippers dusting over the dry, untouched ground. The pain in her own voice was a surprise: “So why are you shutting me out?”

Although Bismuth lowered her hand, the rest of her stayed in place; she was tense, still, but only subtly shivering. Her face held some strange expression that Pearl couldn’t read, so, nervously, she inched closer and touched her broad shoulder. It felt like ice.

She thought back to that day, so many years ago now, when Emmie had staggered across their barricade with Bismuth’s gem clutched in her hands. After almost a month of anxious waiting, the Crystal Gems had thrown a celebration when their comrade had finally reformed, and as happy as Bismuth was to reassure everyone that she was ` _fine_ ’, questions about what exactly she’d been through behind enemy lines were met with deflection and dodgy answers, everything hidden under a mask of boisterousness. There were plenty of  _“Oh, the usual”_ s and  _“They didn’t get a word out of me”_ s, but never anything even coming close to detail.

Pearl folded her arms. She knew what Homeworld mercenaries were like; she had a feeling she could hazard a few guesses as to what they did to her.

There was an old saying, something passed down from pearl to pearl behind their Mistress’ backs— _‘Those who talk don’t know, and those who know don’t talk’._  Bismuth knew something. And although she didn’t talk, her face belied little secrets here and there. With a swallow, Pearl remembered that scared, aching whimper that had escaped Bismuth’s lips when she’d tried to slip a finger inside her.

She just couldn’t let this go.

Petting her shoulder softly, she ventured “Bismuth... you haven’t said two words about it.”

Jerking away from her light touch, Bismuth finally looked away from the ground, but she still wasn’t quite meeting her eye. Although her voice sounded dull, it had a hidden edge: “’Drop it’  _is_ two words.”

“Okay, fine. You want to be like that? Fine!” She sunk back down and fished around in her bucket for her brush. “I don’t know why I expected anything different from someone who’s too  _ashamed_ to be with me.”

“I  _said_ I didn’t mean it,” she gritted out.

She could feel a sneer pulling at the corner of her lips, and as much as she hated how it felt, she couldn’t force it away. “Oh, really? So you don’t regret what we did?”

Bismuth sighed and trailed her palm over her brush, then down to the rags floating in the water below it; it took some time before she answered, and when she did, there was a ghost of something strange haunting her hooded eyes.

“Pearl.” She reached out for her hand, and wasn’t afraid to shuffle forward on her knees to grab at it again when Pearl yanked her arm away. Bismuth took both wrists in her strong hands and forcefully pulled her closer, not hard enough to hurt this time; she was frowning, her lips in a grimace, but her eyes didn’t waver. “I  _am_ ashamed.”

“Oh, you worthless---!”

“Pearl,” she murmured, “Pearl, sweetie, everything about what I did to you was wrong.”

“What you ‘did to me’? Are you  _insane_?!”

“Let me finish!” She may have intended it to sound like a command, but it really was more like a plea. “You... you just don’t understand, Pearl. I’m ashamed I acted on a selfish impulse when I was scared and confused,” she said, sotto voce. Pearl, again, tried to pull back, but Bismuth was like a ten-ton boa constrictor once she had her grip on something, and now that she had both of her hands tightly clasped, Pearl couldn’t get at her sensitive gem with her nails. As she struggled, Bismuth just pulled her closer and closer towards her body, her eyes gleaming and her words thick with pinched-back emotion. “I’m ashamed, Pearl---I’m ashamed I threw myself on you and kissed you without even  _once_ stopping to think if you’d want it. I’m ashamed I used you to try to forget. I’m ashamed I was so wrapped up in myself I couldn’t see  _you_.”

She folded her fingers as best she could inside Bismuth’s huge fists. “Bismuth, we’ve been through this...”

Reaching up, she grabbed one of Pearl’s cowlicks and curled it around her finger---a sweet little token of affection Pearl had seen her use on Emmie countless times before. “I should’ve spent time on you. I should’ve taken the time to court you properly.”

She gulped, and was surprised to feel a lump deep in her throat. “’C-court me properly’?” It was a phrase she hadn’t heard since... well, not for a long time, long past that horizon in her mind she didn’t care to cross.

“Mm-hm.” Bismuth let the lock of hair fall from her finger and put her hand back down on her knee, glancing away with a dusky blush on her cheeks. “You know... the way I should have.”

“No, I don’t know. I have no idea what way a Bismuth ‘should have’ courted a Pearl.” She tried to ease away the snippiness with a smile, but only halfway succeeded. “If I didn’t know better, Bismuth, I’d say you were trying to be  _chivalrous_. That’s a uniquely human conceit; it has no place in Gem society.”

It looked like she was trying not to roll her eyes. With a surprising shakiness, she brushed her fingertips over Pearl’s leg, sending shivers down both of their spines. “Look, Pearl, you and I both know we’ve given a big ‘fuck you’ to  _Gem society_ ,” Bismuth muttered, “So that’s not it. I’m just...”

Her hand trailed up to Pearl’s thigh, then edged to the side to graze her hip. It seemed she was at a sudden loss for words, so she let her touches do the talking, moving along the slim curve of her waist, up her ribcage, prickling goosebumps on her flesh. Her eyes were getting misty as she touched Pearl’s shoulder, down her slender bicep...

And she stopped.

With a bite of her lip, she thumbed Pearl’s elbow. Right where Emmie’s gem had been.

Slowly, cautiously, Pearl reached up and placed her hand over Bismuth’s. “I’m... not... her,” she whispered. “And I’m not going to replace her. You... do know that, right?”

Bismuth deflated. “Of course I do. You think I don’t know that, Pearl?”

Their hands were still clasped, and she moved her palm a bit farther down, touching Pearl’s forearm; her voice had gone soft, like the eroded dust at the base of a mountain. “I was never trying to replace her, I just... just wanted to blot everything else out for a few minutes.” Eyes closed, she swept a sweaty hand through her hair. “So what if I was sticking my finger in a broken dam? I just wanted  _one_ second where I didn’t feel like I was  _drowning_!”

As much as she wanted to wipe it away, Pearl simply watched the tear trickle down her cheek and land with a splash on her lap.

“I know I should’ve waited. I know I should’ve let myself grieve first, but...”

The inflection on that last word seemed lighter, less burdensome than anything she’d said yet, so Pearl leaned forward expectantly. “But?”

Finally, Bismuth smiled, and, rueful as it was, it lifted a weight off of Pearl’s chest just to see it. “But as ashamed as I am... I don’t regret it. I don’t regret a second of it. I wish I could’ve gone about it differently, but, stars... I wouldn’t take it back for the world.” She looked up, and Pearl felt a sharp tug inside her when she saw the raw, frayed look in the blacksmith’s eyes. “Does that make any sense, or am I going crazy?”

“Yes.”

She let loose that rich, deep laugh that had always warmed Pearl down to her core, and to her surprise, Bismuth took her face in her hands and placed a soft kiss on her gem.

“If I’m crazy, then  _you’re_ downright certifiable, princess,” she chuckled.

“For what it’s worth... I, um, wouldn’t... take it back either,” Pearl finally said, her cheeks flushing blue.

“Too bad it was so spur of the moment. Heh. The things I’d do with you if I could turn back time...” Leaning in, Bismuth planted a kiss on the bridge of her nose, right near the tip. “I’ve always figured if you’re gonna sin, you may as well do it right.”

“Hmph. I didn’t know you were such a romantic,” she said dryly.

Pearl turned her head slightly, not wanting to dislodge those big, warm, calloused palms. She eyed the mess Snowflake had left, then returned her eyes to her lover. She understood the guilt Bismuth felt for finding comfort in someone else’s arms when there was a new ghost hanging over her head, but she was starting to realize there was another side to that remorse. Bismuth showed so much concern about treating her as more than  _just a pearl_ , as more than a hand-crafted toy to be used as a frilly little distraction ---and it was as charming as it was annoying.

But it was something Pearl could work with.

She kissed her right between the eyes, like Emmie had been so fond of doing. The feel of Bismuth’s skin under her lips sent an unexpected flash of naughtiness in her mind, and as she felt it seeping down into her body, she decided to jump over the line she herself had drawn a long time ago. “Can we try this again?”

“What do you mean?”

She gently tapped the tip of her nose against Bismuth’s. “Let’s do something you won’t regret,” she said, her eyes askance. “Hmm... you know that waterfall about a half-mile West of here?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. What of it?”

As tenderly as possible, Pearl pushed Bismuth’s arms away from her face; when she got to her feet again, she ‘accidentally’ let her bodysuit catch around her knees, which pulled her neckline down a few scandalous inches. She made quite a show of  _tsk_ ing, fussing, and pulling it back over her minimal cleavage; she didn’t have to look up to know that Bismuth was staring at her slack-jawed.

“Meet me there in fifteen minutes.”

~

When Bismuth showed up she was at least five minutes late, but Pearl didn’t hold it against her---after all, while she’d been choosing her new outfit, she had heard some suspicious shuffling in the bushes. It didn’t surprise her that Bismuth’s apron was askew when she finally emerged, plucking leaves from her hair.

“So glad you decided to join me,” Pearl said with a kittenish smile as she took the hem of her skirt between her fingers and held it up, revealing just a sliver of her garters. “What do you think?”

“You...” Bismuth trailed her wide eyes down Pearl’s slender form as if in a trance. “You... look... very nice.”

Pearl grinned. She’d long since learned the tricks of the trade---while Diamonds were known for liking big, fluffy outfits on their pearls, she’d picked up what other gems had a propensity for by trial and error. Silicates loved dresses with nothing underneath; Agates were partial to corsets; while Rubies rarely had pearls, they were easily distracted from their duties by a quick flash of a lacy brassiere; and Amethysts, predictably, would get weak in the knees if they saw something tasty that could be sucked or nibbled off a shapely thigh. Rose, her precious Rose, liked her Pearl with legs bare and outfit clinging. And although she’d never had another Bismuth before, the one Antimony who’d spent a night with her had slaveredover her pantyhose.

Judging by her hot cheeks and the sweat she was licking off her lips, her Bismuth was having a similar reaction.

Pearl tittered and sat down on a rock by the riverbank; as she gracefully draped one leg over the other, she toed the grass at her feet and beckoned to Bismuth with a little grin. “Why don’t you come have a seat?”

She stumbled forward, but managed to sit down with at least a bit of dignity. Her eyes were glued to Pearl’s leg---or, more specifically, the crescent of pale, unclothed skin visible just under her skirt. “So, um...”

“Hush.”

She pressed the sole of her foot against Bismuth’s chest, not hard, just enough to let her know she should stay seated. “You said you felt bad for... how was it you put it?... ‘taking me down in the dirt’,” she said demurely, spreading her toes along Bismuth’s muscles. “I thought I’d give you a chance to prove yourself somewhere a bit more... romantic.”

Bismuth reached for her ankle, but Pearl quickly twisted it to the side with a slight shove. “Ah, ah! No touching.”

“But---”

“Not yet,” she said. “You have to  _earn_ the right to put your hands on me.”

The look on Bismuth’s face started out as bewildered, but a smile dimpled Pearl’s cheeks as she watched it transform to wary, then to an impish smirk. “Oh really?”

“Yes, really.” Pearl uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, making sure to give Bismuth a quick peek-a-boo between them, and then replaced the foot on her chest. This time she pressed a bit lower, toeing at the setting of her gem. “You seemed to want to atone just a little while ago. Have you changed your mind?”

Bismuth pretended that little nudge was enough to make her sit back on her heels, and deliberately put her hands beneath her shins, as if she needed more than just willpower to pin them in place. “This is an interesting development, to say the least,” she snickered as she gazed down at the foot Pearl held against her. “So... what do I have to do?”

“I was hoping you’d ask.” She withdrew her foot and dismissed her slipper. “Why don’t you start here?”

She snorted, a flush rising over her face as she watched Pearl wiggle her toes beneath the smooth fabric. “Why, you kinky little...”

She got her big toe in Bismuth’s mouth before she could finish her sentence. She’d expected a bit of resistance, even if only feigned, but was more than pleased when those thick lips wrapped around her right up to the ball of her foot.

“Mm-hm,” she murmured as she felt Bismuth’s tongue swirling the silk hose over her skin. As she tickled her fingertip up the arch, Bismuth pulled back with a ‘pop’ and moved to the next toe, tenderly teasing it with her mouth. She spent a few moments giving each toe-tip a light kiss, and dutifully went back to her suckling, making sure each one was wet and warm before moving to the next. When she returned to the big toe, Pearl nearly kicked her in the chin when she began to sing-song:

_“This little piggy went to market, this little piggy went home...”_

“That does it!”

Pearl jumped off her perch and stuffed her hand into Bismuth’s locs before she could yank herself away. “If I want you to be cheeky, I’ll  _tell_ you to be cheeky,” she said frostily, despite the smile playing at her lips. Bismuth made a move to pull back, but Pearl dug her nails into her scalp and held her in place.

“Oh yeah?” It was subtle, but the delicate shivers going up Bismuth’s body made their way to her head, trembling along Pearl’s fingers. “What  _else_  are you gonna tell me, Pearl?”

“Thank you for reminding me.”

Without removing her fist, she ducked her head down and planted a quick kiss right near Bismuth’s lips, but not quite on them. Their eyes met, and the blacksmith’s grin dissolved a little when she saw the look clouding Pearl’s face. She wasn’t exactly  _unused_  to being in a submissive position, but seeing something so close to acrimony when she looked up at a dominant partner was new---and it made worry strum in her gut.

She nervously drummed her nails against her legs. “Pearl---”

“First thing’s first,” she said with a jostle, “From now on, you will not address me as ‘Pearl’. Do you understand?”

Her mouth opened and closed noiselessly.

“Mistress,” she fed to her, her voice all syrupy. “You will call me either ‘Mistress’ or ‘Ma’am’. Do you understand me,  _pet?_ ”

“Y....es,” Bismuth finally managed. Then, slowly, a smile spread across her face. So this cute little Pearl wanted to play rough? Sure, fine---let her see what she’s up against. “Yes, your  _Highness_ ,” she said smugly.

The slap was so unexpected that Bismuth actually toppled onto her left elbow; when she looked up, shocked and cradling her cheek, some of the earlier danger had melted from Pearl’s face, but she still had exasperation in her eyes when she took a knee by Bismuth’s side.

“Where are you?” she said quietly. “Talk to me, Bismuth.”

She just spluttered as she rubbed the side of her face.

“You must be familiar with rainbows,” Pearl went on, but it didn’t slip past Bismuth that one hand was still hovering, readied for another slap. “We’re going to use the light spectrum. ‘Green’ means you’re fine, ‘yellow’ and ‘orange’ mean you’re not sure and you’re reaching your limits respectively, and ‘red’ means stop. Alright?”

“Bit late for that, don’t you think?” It was as snarky a response as she could muster while her mind was blaring with the surprise that  _Pearl knew about Safe Words?! **Pearl,**  of all gems, who couldn’t even say ‘fuck’?_

“Where are you?”

Bismuth pushed herself off the ground and got back on her knees, but she was still chewing her lips around from the stinging on her cheek. It was far from the hardest slap she’d ever taken---she’d once called an Agate ‘sweet cheeks’ and, damn, she’d felt  _that_  one for days---but it seemed the most unfair.

Pearl thinned her lips, and Bismuth flinched when her hand rose in the air. “Answer me, pet.”

Knowing there wasn’t a colour for ‘I have no fucking idea’, she went with “Uh... halfway between green and yellow?”

The hand she held aloft slowly drifted back down to her hip. “So. Chartreuse, hm? That’s your answer?”

‘Chartreuse’ made as much sense to her as the weird noises humans babbled to each other, but she nodded, just before her voice kicked back in; years of lying in the embrace of a blind lover had taught her to use her words. “Yes, Pe--- Yes,  _Mistress_. That’s my answer.”

“Mm.” With a gentle pat to the handprint on her pet’s cheek, Pearl took to her feet and bobbed on her heels as she dismissed her skirt. The little glimmers dispersed around her thighs, revealing pastel blue panties that were clinging to the slight cleft between her lips.

 

 

She lifted onto the tips of her toes and twirled, giving Bismuth one good, if fleeting, three-sixty view, before delicately landing again in a modified arabesque.

“Good?”

Bismuth just nodded dumbly.

Smirking, Pearl brought her foot back to the ground a few inches from her pet’s fingertips. “Good.” Then she grabbed her lover by the back of her head and yanked her forward, hissing “Now  _lick_.”

Bismuth obeyed, and she moaned greedily as her tongue laved around; though her face was too squashed against Pearl’s pelvis to get a better look at that wonderfully skimpy outfit, she could feel every slip of silk under her tongue, every curl of hair whisking out from the lacy edges, every time cool, slick flesh brushed up against her nose. The panties bunching up in her mouth were already hot and damp, and when she pulled on that sweet cunt, bursts of mossy fragrance filled her mouth right to the back of her throat. She could breathe it in forever, if Pearl would let her.

But that was only the appetizer. Pearl’s quiet sighs of pleasure reached a different cadence when she wrenched Bismuth’s head away. “On...” She had to take a moment to gather herself. “On your hands and knees, facing away from me. Now.”

Her heavy-lidded eyes felt gummy as she watched her pet get into position; head bowed so low her locs fell over her face, ass raised, legs spread... she was presenting like a feral gem in heat. It had been a long,  _long_  time since she’d admired such a sight, and Pearl’s face flushed as blue as her wet panties.

Bismuth’s hand was wandering backwards. “Mph. Like... like this?”

“No. Don’t touch yourself. Keep that hand on the ground.”

Her fingers hesitated over her leg. “I wasn’t going to...”

“Put. It. Back.”

With Bismuth facing away from her, she couldn’t read her expression---but she was surprised to hear what sounded like a muffled giggle. “Yes, Mistress,” she mumbled as she replaced her palm on the ground.

“You’re learning,” she said magnanimously as she began a slow stride around her, “But you’re not quite there yet. I want you to keep your hands and your eyes on the ground unless I tell you otherwise.”

“Yes, Mist---” She struggled to keep her laughter down. “Yes, Mistress.”

Pearl pinched the end of a loc between her fingers and gave it a sharp tug, just enough to make her gasp in pain. “Is something funny?”

“No. Not at all.”

Tracing her sharp nails along the skin of Bismuth’s back just hard enough to make her shiver, Pearl paced around her huge arms and stopped when she was hovering right over her head. Bismuth made a move to look up, but caught herself in time and kept her eyes focused on the ground.

“Good little gem.” She reached down and poked at her lips. “Suck.”

Having her toes in Bismuth’s mouth had been fun, but a ticklish kind of delight coursed through her when her pet began to suck her finger. She did more than just bob her head; she took the time to graze with her teeth and tongue, alternating between tightening and loosening her lips, showing far more finesse than Pearl had expected from someone who’d been so shy just a little while ago. In fact, it seemed like Bismuth was doing her best to impress her, treating her slim digit like it was a different body part altogether. So she had experience going down on different anatomies. The very thought made her toes curl in her still-damp stockings.  _Splendid_.

“That’s enough,” she said as she pulled her hand away, smiling when she saw Bismuth struggling against the urge to lift her eyes. She let her spit-soaked finger drift over her lover’s ribs as she made her way behind her again, and gave her a sharp pinch where her leg met her body. “You’ve been very good, pet. I think you should get a treat.”

“R-really?”

“Well... almost. You still have some repenting to do.” Although she gave Bismuth’s ass a few pats, her focus was somewhere else---specifically, up at the lithe, flexible branches swaying in the trees above her. “Stay still. I’ll be right back.”

Pearl’s footfalls were so delicate that she could barely hear them under the rushing water of the river, but Bismuth didn’t risk looking back. The only movement she allowed herself was the nervous tapping of her boots against the earth; she’d spent most of her life putting on a tough exterior, and though she had submitted to Emmie a few times in the past, they’d always started out with clear boundaries and expectations. Plunging into something like this with a gem she’d first kissed just a day prior was as nerve-wracking as diving head-first into shallow water.

And she had a feeling Pearl was still a little pissed at her...

She watched the grass blow back and forth between her hands as she subtly cocked her head to try to pick up the muffled sounds from behind her. She could hear Pearl’s stocking feet scrabbling against tree bark, and then a tiny ‘snap’. The shimmering noise must be her summoning her spear, followed by the hissing _shh-shh-shh_ of shucking. Something whistled as it went swinging through the air, and then came the returning footsteps.

“Take a deep breath,” Pearl commanded.

She did. But it didn’t help.

Many years ago, when she was still new to Earth, she’d grabbed a beehive off a branch. She had no clue that it was filled with hundreds of tiny, and now furious, creatures that would swarm out and form a buzzing cloud of  _pure pain_  around her. Almost as painful was listening to Biggs fall over laughing as she watched her run around screaming. Then a few of the little bastards got under her clothes, and, stars, stings in  _those_  places formed a memory that wouldn’t soon leave her---much like the nickname of ‘Honey’ that Biggs had only recently dropped. But if she thought getting punctured over a hundred times was bad, she had no words for the sudden lash of all of those stings at once that went searing across her ass.

Actually, she had two: “OH  _SHIT!”_

“Language, pet.”

She whipped her head around and glared at Pearl, who was fingering her switch with a calm, self-assured look on her face. “What the hell, Pearl?!”

“I told you not to address me by my name.” With one hand she gestured for her to turn back around, flicking the switch about in the other. “You get three more for that. Six if you cuss again.”

Grudgingly, Bismuth went back to staring down at her hands. “What I put up with just to be with you...” she grumbled.

“Hush.”

She made it to the second lash before blurting out a string of expletives. By the third she had her fingernails digging into the dirt, and the fourth made her squeeze her legs together. Even though her cheeks were screaming out in hot, prickling pain, she was acutely aware of every single inch of her body, and to her surprise, it felt like she was full of lightning---she was panting, quaking, sweating, and for the first time since she’d been hauled off the battlefield, she felt completely and dangerously  _alive_. The fifth lash landed, and she moaned when she felt a hot droplet drip from her pussy and down to soak her pants.

When she heard the sound of the switch flying through the air for the sixth time she flinched, but it slapped down on Pearl’s palm instead. “Where are you, Bismuth?”

Her knees were pinched together, but it did nothing to stop the dribbles from leaking out of her. It did nothing to keep Pearl from noticing, either. “Y...yellow,” she stammered, and tried not to squawk when she felt her clit puff out. Who knew that this kind of pain could reverberate into pleasure?

“Hm... impressive,” Pearl said as she lifted the switch above her head; she landed the blow she knew wouldn’t be the last, and smiled when she heard Bismuth chew a strangled ” _Fuck_!” through her knuckles. “You get ten more.”

“What?!”

“Count them.”

Mercifully, she gave Bismuth enough time to brace herself before starting. A flock of birds left the trees in a startled flutter when she began howling out: “One! Two! Shit---three!”

She held the switch up in the air, bending down just enough to run a hand over her pet’s skin. “What was that?”

With a rumbling groan, she crossed her legs at the knees and began rubbing her thighs together. “M-Mistress, I didn’t mean it, I---”

Pearl tittered as she patted the dampening spot she could see forming on her pants. “Don’t be such a little slut, pet. Don’t pleasure yourself.”

“But...”

“Uncross your legs,” she ordered. “You’re not to come until I give you permission.”

That just made her rub even harder. “But---!”

“Twenty more if you don’t stop that right this instant.”

With a shudder, Bismuth reluctantly pried her legs apart and returned her left knee to the ground. The quiet “ _Please_ ” she mumbled was so delicious Pearl could almost taste it. Again, she touched the wet spot, but this time she cupped it gently, moving her thumb around the softness. “This,” she purred, “Is  _mine_. This is  _my_  toy to play with as I see fit. Do you understand, pet?”

“Y-yes, M-Mistress.”

She withdrew her hand and brought it up to her nose. As she took in Bismuth’s thick, cloying scent, she lifted the switch and said “What do you understand? Tell me.”

“My... my...” She choked a bit, and Pearl could tell by the way her leg was twitching that she was just dying to lift it up again. “My...  _p-pussy_... belongs to you.”

She grinned. She’d seen that blush on the back of her neck when the word left her lips. How adorable. “Good. You got to three. Now keep counting.”

She didn’t give Bismuth the chance to prepare before whipping her right on top of one of the fresh lashes, and her pet turned her weird yelping noise into a gargled “Four!” as she valiantly strove to keep her legs from buckling.

“Stay still, pet. Don’t fidget.” Using the wet spot as a guide, Pearl changed the angle of her swing and hit her just above where it would really count.

“Fu-u-...!” She slapped her hand on the ground. “Five!”

“Wonderful.” Shifting her stance, Pearl licked her lips and suppressed a sigh as she gazed at the sweat rolling down Bismuth’s arms. She had always been apprehensive about giving in to her baser desires, but seeing such a big, strong gem on her knees, under her control, nervous but willing to let herself be tamed and taken... Stars, she was tingling. She whipped her again, and hid her moan under Bismuth’s “S-s-i-i-x!”

Pearl slid the switch through her fist, pleased to feel how warm it had become. She was dying to stick her fingers under Bismuth’s waistband and yank her pants down her legs, but she knew she needed to finish the punishment first. They  _both_  had to earn it. This time she flogged the top of her thighs.

“Gah! Ah-ah-ah! S...seven!”

With just the tip of the switch, Pearl gave her a few light taps from her thighs up to her tailbone as she undid the bow around her waist. “As cute as you are when you squirm... I thought I told you to stay still.”

“ _Hnng..._ ” She let out a primal kind of noise when her apron fell away from her body, exposing her belly and breasts to the cool air. The last strike had sent her scrambling, and with a desperate grunt of effort she pulled herself back into her original position, correcting her mistake. “I’m s-sorry, M-Mist-tre---!”

And suddenly she couldn’t speak. Not with Pearl’s dainty fingers holding the top of her vulva in a viciously sharp pinch.

“This is mine,” she said with a twist of her wrist. “Don’t you forget that.”

When Pearl let go, Bismuth was shuddering so hard, burning so hot, that the eighth lash hit like a blaze of light all through her flesh, blinding and scalding. Conscious thought was blotted out for a few seconds, and when her mind haltingly ebbed back, she realized she’d forgotten to count. “Oh, shit. Eight! Eight!”

“Too late.”

Her urgent groan brought a smile to Pearl’s face. “I’m starting to think ten lashes won’t be enough,” she said with a strange warmth in her voice. “Not if you’re still disobeying. You’re counting up to fifteen now.”

“Please, Pearl!”

The switch hit her right between the shoulder blades. “It’s ‘Mistress’ to you, pet! How many times do I have to tell you?!”

Her hands shot out from under her, and as Bismuth fell onto her elbows, she buried her face in her palms and cried out “No, wait!  _WAIT_!”

Although she’d reared back for another strike, Pearl didn’t bring her weapon down again, nor did she speak, not even to scold her pet for talking out of line. She just stayed like that and watched.

Bismuth struggled, huffing, to pull her upper body out of that hunched-up pose, and when she was sure Pearl wasn’t going to reprimand her, she glanced over her shoulder, blinking the sweat out of her eyes as she peered at her through tangled hair.

Pearl sighed, and her guarded expression melted; those big, shining eyes looking up at her with such vulnerability sent a hot ache squeezing deep inside of her. “You may speak, pet, but don’t get any ideas. You’re not yet permitted to look me in the eye.” She made a motion with the switch. “And get back into position.”

Bismuth did as she was told, but Pearl saw a tiny smile before she turned her blushing face back to the ground. “Thank you.”

“Now, what was so important you felt the need to interrupt?”

Her normally-boisterous tone came out hushed with shyness: “Please don’t... uh... leave marks where anyone else could see them.”

It took a great effort to hold in her moans. “Oh, Bismuth,” she whispered. That sweet, nervous request got to her more than she’d care to admit---swimming before her closed eyes were visions of the blacksmith walking around with lewd lovebites dotting her neck and shoulders, the thick welts on her bare back making public what she’d savoured in secret. A giddy thrill went through her when she thought of her big, tough lover squirming in embarrassment from being so openly claimed.  
  


But she knew she couldn’t do that. Not today. Not yet.

Pearl ran her hand down her throat in an effort to calm herself, and was surprised to feel how hot her skin had become. “You make a good point,” she conceded as she ghosted her nails over her lover’s spine. “I should keep my work of art hidden from prying eyes.” Her hand slid between Bismuth’s legs and, again, she gathered the moist fabric in her palm, but this time she rolled the flesh back and forth in her grip until she heard a contented rumble from deep in Bismuth’s chest. “Now, tell me, pet...”

Without releasing her, Pearl bent over and kissed the crook between Bismuth’s shoulder and neck.

_“Who do you belong to?”_

Bismuth ducked her head and made a soft, quiet noise that sounded almost like a stifled laugh. “You. I belong to you.”

“Say it again.”

“I belong to you, Mistress,” she breathed. “I’m yours. I’m your... your toy.”

Her grip loosened, and Pearl let her thumb linger on those plump lips, flicking lightly over the hardened clit she could feel right through her pants. “Very good. You’re learning.”

Just as Bismuth was starting to thank her, Pearl sent the ninth lash onto her upturned ass, avoiding her back. “Well?”

“Gyah, fuck, I---!” There were depressions in the sod from where her toes had been digging. “I lost count!”

“Then you’ll have to start over.”

_“WHAT?!”_

“Easy now,” she said, but her reassuring tone was for her own sake as much as Bismuth’s. Very few and far between were the times she’d been in a position of power over someone else, and now, looking down at her pet, she knew she was dancing on the very edge of danger. She’d lost control once or twice in the distant past, and had ended up seriously harming her partner, not to mention their relationship. She couldn’t let that happen again.

“Do you trust me?”

Bismuth made a piteous noise as she nodded.

“Good,” Pearl said, beaming, as she watched a loc fall from her shoulder and over her face. Bismuth was hurt, probably mortified, but she was still shaking with pleasure. She’d pushed through physical pain just to get to this place... She  _wanted_  to be here. She’d not yet said the safe word.

_‘If you’re gonna sin, you may as well do it right.’_

She fully intended to hold her to that.

With a wicked grin, Pearl wetted the switch between her lips. “Now start counting, and don’t disappoint me by losing your place again.”

She twisted her whole body backwards and flung her arm in a wide arc, using the momentum to bring the weapon down so hard it landed with a ‘CRACK’ that was louder than any blow so far. Her pet’s flesh rippled under it, and she jolted like she’d touched a live wire just a second before a shriek ripped from deep in her core. One hand shot out to catch her falling face, and the other darted back to clutch her swollen, bruised backside; for a few seconds all she could vocalize were strange animalistic coughs and grunts, and when her words came back, they were in pieces.

“Oh sh-sh-shit,” she mewled into the crushed grass as she wriggled her body around in agony. “Oh, stars above, oh fuck...”

Pearl took a step backwards, startled, when she saw she’d actually made a rip in her pants, right above her wet, spreading excitement. Bismuth had a tough hide, and could splash around in lava like it was water; she never would’ve guessed a gem like that could be brought down to a gasping, quivering heap from a simple spanking.

_Did I push it too far?_ she wondered, watching as Bismuth tenderly touched her injuries with a groan, her limbs shaking and her chin grinding in the dirt. Worse yet--- _Is she **letting**  me push it too far?_

She worried a nail between her teeth. “Bismuth...”

“Orange,” she whimpered as she gingerly dabbed her fingertips on her torn trousers and the wounds beneath. “Orange, M-mistress.  _Please_.”

Opening her fist, Pearl tossed the switch aside and rushed around her body. Once she’d dropped to her knees, she quickly snatched up the hand Bismuth had balled under her face, frowning in concern when she felt how slick it was, covered with sweat, spit, and a few leaked tears. “Shh, shh, it’s alright,” Pearl whispered as she did her best to whisk the wetness away from her pet’s screwed-up eyes. “You did so well, Bismuth. You did such a good job.”

“I... I can’t take much more...!”

“I know.” She kissed her forehead and ran a hand through her locs, both of which were damp with perspiration. “You can look at me now, pet, and you can touch me if you’d like.”

She lifted her gaze from the ground, still trembling. Through the sticky eyelashes and loose hairs, she looked as exposed and stripped bare as the fresh, debarked wood Pearl left behind when she cut the switch.

“You’re such a lovely mess right now,” Pearl said soothingly as she swept a curl back under Bismuth’s headband. Even though her broad fingers were grass-stained and caked with dirt, Pearl took Bismuth’s hand in hers and held it up to cradle her face. After nuzzling her sandy palm, she planted a kiss on the pad of her thumb and manoeuvred Bismuth’s hand downwards until it was resting on her collarbone. “You deserve something special for your hard work. Would you like a reward, pet?”

Her wide eyes were glued on Pearl’s breasts; her nipples were stiffening into taut points which were visible though her filmy lingerie. “Yes  _please_.”

Although it would be easier to just dismiss it, Pearl chose to reach behind her back and unhook her brassiere, letting it fall onto Bismuth’s wrist. Her good little pet stayed still and made no move to pick it up. As Pearl rose from her kneeling position, she slowly inched her underwear down her legs, gasping when the wet silk peeled away from her vulva; disentangling herself without kneeing her lover in the eye--- _again_ \---was a little awkward, but after a few fumbles she got her panties down around her ankles and stepped aside, naked from the stockings up.

“I’m very sorry, pet,” she remarked as she playfully snapped her garters. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done an official striptease. I hope you don’t mind.”

A half-grin was playing on Pearl’s face as she watched Bismuth’s eyes dart about from the lacy bra draped over her knuckles, the panties between her thumbs, the peachy thighs on either side of her head, the wet pussy right in front of her nose. It took a few clicks before she realized she was being addressed, and when she finally pried her gaze away from her Mistress’ body and up to her face, all she could eke out was “...Huh?”

“Eloquent as ever,” Pearl giggled. “I take it you enjoyed the show regardless.” Smoothing one hand over her damp curls, the other toying at her breasts, she purred “Would you like to touch me, pet? Would you like to feel my body?”

Bismuth licked her lips as she valiantly struggled not to break eye contact with the gorgeous gem standing in front of her in all her naked glory. “Oh  _hell_  yes.”

“Then taste me, darling. Put your mouth on me.”

She didn’t need to be told twice. Bismuth lunged forward, her whole world shrinking down to that pale pink posy blooming out between Pearl’s fingers. Pearl took her head in her hands, but this time she was much more mellow, guiding instead of forcing, letting her pet set the rhythm and just riding along with it. Bismuth’s hunger made her sloppy at first, and she dug around madly, thrashing her head back and forth between Pearl’s pretty legs until she was sticky from her eyelids to her chin. She slowly regained some control when Pearl hooked a leg around her shoulder and leaned onto her for balance, and instead of greedily sating her own desire, Bismuth switched to focusing on Pearl, on  _her_  pleasure, on  _her_  wants, on anything that would make  _her_  happy.

“Mmm, that’s it. Right there,” she crooned as Bismuth’s nose pushed at her hood. She let her run the flat of her tongue down her clit, between her lips, but stopped her when she was one lick away from slipping deep inside. “Okay, tha... that’s enough,” she panted as she wrested her face away.

Bismuth stared up at her, tonguing the skin around her mouth, and Pearl beamed down at her flushed, glowing face. “Did you like that, pet? Did you like your treat?”

“Yes, Mistress. T-thank you, Mistress,” she stammered through bitten lips, and Pearl couldn’t help but snicker. For someone who’d started out as such a bratty bottom, Bismuth was beginning to look like she was staring at a mirage while clawing through a desert, dying of thirst.

“Time for  _my_  treat.”

Pearl pulled Bismuth’s neck strap over her head, being careful not to snag it on the soft line of fuzzy baby hairs under her dreadlocks, and dropped the apron on the ground. She was nearly naked and Bismuth was only topless, but Pearl could still feel the power she held over her. She relished it. As she dipped a hand down to cup her small, puffy breast, she kissed Bismuth’s temple and gave her a simple order: “Strip.”

“You mean... everything?”

“Yes, exactly. Take your pants off. The boots, too. I want you naked, pet.” She withdrew her hand from Bismuth’s chest and brought it to rest on her own concave belly, tickling herself lightly as she dragged her nails across her skin. “You’re going to strip for me, and you’re going to stay that way until I get back.”

Her eyes widened, and the blush that had been darkening her cheeks spread across her face and neck, almost down to her gem, which was beginning to glow with a warm rainbow light. “Until you ‘get back’? Wh---You want me to just wait here buck-fucking naked?!”

Pearl frowned and rested her knuckles on her hipbone. “Did I stutter?”

Still blushing furiously, Bismuth let out a worried groan and pulled her less-shaky arm up around her torso to cover her breasts. “I---but---Mistress, this is a  _public place!”_

She smirked. “So was the path to the forge.”

At that, Bismuth sheepishly looked away, but Pearl could still hear her mutter  _“Touché.”_

“Naked,” she repeated with a clap of her hands. “Now, pet.”

“Oh jeez...”

Slowly, she returned her hand to the ground, and her nipples tightened in both fear and excitement. Even though her Mistress’ beautiful pussy was just inches away from her eyes, she was too abashed to face her, and so kept steadfastly peering down at her knuckles as she gulped her spit and Pearl’s wetness down her throat. After a few false starts, she finally sent what was left of her uniform away in a glimmer. “There. Happy?” she grumbled.

“Not particularly. You’re starting to get an attitude again.” Pearl peered up at the trees, pretending to be mulling something over as she scratched her chin. “Hm. I could always cut a bigger switch...”

_“No!!”_

She turned to look at her pet with an aloof kind of expression that just barely masked her smugness. “What was that?”

“Please, no,” Bismuth mumbled down to the ground, her chest heaving. “It already feels like my ass lost a bet to a shark---I don’t think I can go through that again for a long time.”

“You can either get switched, or be a good little gem. It’s up to you, pet.”

She crossed her ankles in an attempt to keep her legs from shaking. “I’ll be good.”

Pearl chuckled. “Of course you will.” She languidly ran a knuckle along the one whip-mark she’d left on Bismuth’s back, and then crouched down to kiss the raised flesh. “Now, you’re not to move until I tell you to. Is that understood?”

“Yes.” When Pearl cleared her throat, she quickly added “Mistress.”

“You’re to keep your head down and your, ahem, hindquarters up,” she went on. “And I want my toy on display.”

Bismuth lifted her head just slightly. “...Mistress?”

She had to close her eyes; her imagination was running wild with possibilities. “Spread your labia. Hold your sweet little vulva open, but don’t pleasure yourself.”

A bead of sweat was itching down the side of her face, but Bismuth knew better than to wipe it away. “A-and what if someone walks by?”

“Then they’ll get a nice little thrill, won’t they?” Taking her chin in her hand, Pearl turned Bismuth’s head around so they were eye-to-eye. “I promise it’ll be worth it,” she said kindly. “Where are you?”

Bismuth blinked, but couldn’t look away from those powder blue eyes. She looked breathtaking. The layers Pearl had built up around herself over the millennia were flaking away, and it felt like she was staring at the last barricade around her soul. It took every fibre of her being to keep from seizing her lips in a deep kiss.

“Well?”

At first, Bismuth didn’t know how to answer. She never could’ve imagined she’d find herself in such a state---naked, shivering, covered in welts, embarrassed beyond belief,  _having sex in public,_  for fuck’s sake, and yet... she was so close to coming that her clit was throbbing in desperation. If Pearl told her to stay naked for the next thousand years in exchange for one orgasm, she’d gladly do it.

Another thought hit her: she was supposed to be on scrub duty. She’d dropped everything to go chasing after Pearl, and if anyone was to notice the unfinished work, they’d probably come looking for her. And since the waterfall was a common gathering area, there was a good chance she’d be found. Any one of her friends could just stumble upon her like  _this_ , soaked, redolent of unfinished sex, with her flogged ass bobbing in the air like a damn piñata. It would be so fucking humiliating, but it was what Pearl wanted...

And part of her wondered if she wanted it, too.

Her cunt squeezed, and she was suddenly dizzy with lust. “Green.”

Pearl’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

“Yes, Mistress,” she said, returning the smile. “But please don’t take too long. I’m dying here.”

“I’m sure you’ll survive.” Bismuth tried to swallow her moan when Pearl licked the sweat off her cheek. “Mm. Now, do as I say, pet. Spread yourself open for the world to see.”

Bismuth drew a breath in through her nose and blew it out through her pursed lips, then shakily reached an arm under her body. As Pearl started a slow walk around her, she stroked a hand from her locs to her shoulder blades, grazing her nails back and forth over her spine. “You know, Bismuth, I don’t think I’ve told you how much I love your choice of outfit,” she began with a coy grin.

“Uh... really?” Bismuth twisted her mouth in confusion; that was certainly an odd thing to say to someone who’d just disrobed.

“Mm-hm. I just  _love_  that you show off your muscles. Your powerful back... these strong arms...” She touched each part in turn, idling her fingers on the swell of her bicep. “And now that I’ve seen how  _beautiful_  your breasts are... do you know how provocative that apron is?”

She almost fell on her face. “I beg your pardon?!”

“No shirt. You just have two... little... straps covering your pretty chickadees,” she continued, now caressing Bismuth’s waist. “It’s a wonder you never pop out when you’re sparring.”

She had no idea how to respond to that, aside from letting a startled whine slip from between her teeth. In all the thousands of years since she’d emerged, no one had ever told her they’d admired the sight of her body before.

“You’re welcome,” Pearl said primly. “But as much as I like how you fill out your clothes, I definitely prefer you like this. Now, let’s take a look at my creation.”  
She finished circling around her pet, and when she got a glimpse of what was waiting for her back there, her voice hitched in her throat, weak and reedy. “Oh,  _Bismuth_.”

Stars, the sight was even more glorious than she’d imagined. She couldn’t decide which she liked better---the big, curvy ass criss-crossed with dark ribbons, or the petals stretched and spread under Bismuth’s fingers. Silvery trickles of excitement were covering her thighs and her trembling hand; her index finger was twitching, but she dutifully kept it away from the clit that was poking out from her kaleidoscopic curls, all wet, heavy, and vulnerable.

“I-is this okay?” Bismuth stammered.

Pearl let out an enraptured sigh. “ _Perfect_.”

She traced along the heftiest of the imprints she’d painted on her, pride swelling in her core. That light touch made Bismuth’s teeth chatter, so Pearl gave her a cheerful swat and laughed at the way she whimpered. “Part of me thinks it should be a crime to keep this hidden...” Kneeling down, she took both cheeks in her palms and squeezed, darting her tongue over her coccyx. “...But I’m just greedy enough to want to keep this for myself.”

“Mistress...”

“Stay like that,” she directed as she stood back up. “Keep holding yourself open, and don’t you dare touch that pretty clit. I’ll know if you do.”

“Yes, Mistress,” she said under her breath as a shiver wracked her body.

Pearl chuckled, and ran her finger up Bismuth’s inner thigh to catch a bit of her fluid. Swabbing it over her tongue, she smacked her lips and summoned a different outfit, one that looked almost identical to her usual, save for the hose and garters. “I’ll be back, so don’t you move a muscle.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So do you think Bismuth's going to stay still while she waits for Pearl, or is she going to be a brat? ;)
> 
> IMPORTANT NOTE: I meant to add this when I first uploaded the chapter, but it slipped my mind. This chapter depicts UNHEALTHY BDSM! These are flawed characters, and they're going about this in a completely unethical way, mostly by throwing away the BDSM rule of "Safe, Sane, and Consensual". For a better analysis of what's going wrong, check out Master_of_the_boot1's comment below. :)


	6. Two Seconds Too Late

Bismuth wheezed as she listened to Pearl’s retreating footfalls, but didn’t turn to watch her go. It didn’t matter—she had enough to focus on, anyway. So much, in fact, that she had to close her eyes to block out some of the sensations; her legs were shaking, her ass stinging, her cunt so sopping wet it was dripping down her fingers right to her wrist. She could smell it all around her. Even the gentle brush of grass on her knuckles felt like a hot crackle of electricity.

  
Her mind was reeling. The last time she’d been whipped was back on Homeworld, and it had been decidedly less pleasant, leaving her with blood sheeting down her back and a blistering rage in her teeth. She bit her lip when she remembered her Kindergarten sister JJ soothing her as the Agate stomped off, wiping away her tears with one hand and pulling her pants back up with the other. It had been in front of all the other Bismuths, too, just to make sure it’d stick, and it damn well did. All of them, every one except JJ, had laughed at her and smacked her ass when she went limping into the workplace the next day.  
  


Bismuth puffed out a breath when she felt another loc slip from her sweaty headband. That Agate bitch’s whip had actually been  _less_  physically painful than the switch—what kind of magic did Pearl have to turn a flogging into something so erotic?

  
_And she knows about Safe Words,_  she mused to herself.  _How many times has she been the one holding the whip instead of being on the receiving end?_  
  


A prickling shiver went up her spine, and she shook that thought right out of her head. Just thinking of her charming little Pearl in any position like that made her queasy. She’d often recognized that haunted look on Pearl’s face, the flinch of pain when a nasty memory came out sudden and stinging; she could guess at her past torment, the torment of most Pearls, but she didn’t want to know the details. She had no right to know the details.

  
Bismuth ran her tongue over her lips as she opened her eyes, and the first thing they fell on were the panties still crumpled between her hands. That brought the smile back to her face. Pearl could have just glimmered them away when she’d changed her outfit, but no, the little she-devil had left them right there, right where she’d have to stare at the wet spot and catch the whiff every time the wind changed. She didn’t know how Pearl had pegged her as having such an…  _interest._.. in lingerie, but she’d certainly played that to her advantage.

  
A breeze nipped at her groin, and she keened when it cooled the hot lick of wetness pooling in her open palm. Her lips were so small that prying them apart like that had pulled her hood back too, and her heavy clit, hanging naked in the air, had become more sensitive than ever before. Even in her wildest of heats, it never got this bad. Every place Pearl had touched or licked was singed into her skin like a brand.

  
‘ _I belong to you._ ’

  
She still couldn’t believe she’d actually said that. One of the primary tenets of the Crystal Gems was self-determination, and she’d just flung that to the wind in exchange for a mouthful of Pearl’s sweet, soft body. And she’d do it again, and again and again, without a doubt. Even the indignity of being publicly stripped and splayed open like some by-the-hour rent gem was somehow exciting, the hot shame embroidered into her desire, pinching and pulling at it and bringing her ever higher.

  
_And what if someone does wander by?_  Shifting uncomfortably, she let out a sharp gasp when the side of her knuckle accidentally bumped her clit.  _Would I be allowed to move then, or…_

  
The muscles in her thighs tightened. _…Or would ‘Mistress’ be willing to share?_

  
She was certain Pearl had only been gone for a few minutes, but they were already dragging into an eternity. Maybe someone  _would_  come along and… and what? Just help herself? Would she get another flogging if she pushed the intruder off, or…

  
Her lash-wounds were starting to throb as they slowly swelled.  _No. I’ll be good. I’ll stay still no matter who shows up._

  
A droplet slid from her thumb and onto her thigh. As she felt it slowly trickle down her leg, Bismuth grinned and let her lust-addled mind wander just a few paces further.  _Maybe that was Pearl’s plan all along._  Without turning her head, she glanced to the bushes she’d been hiding in just a half-hour prior; even though she was looking through her peripheral vision, she could swear she saw the back-and-forth flicker of a shadow behind the tufty leaves. 

  
The only organ she had inside of her was a vestigial womb, but she still felt like there was a storm of moths beating around in her belly.  _Maybe…no. Would she?_

  
Pearl was a romantic at heart, she knew that. But she seemed to like spice as much as sugar. As sudden as a slap upside the head, she remembered something from the last time her Mistress had been in charge of the pre-battle sparring; when one of the new recruits had started bitching about how ‘hard-assed’ Pearl was being, she’d just tittered something along the lines of  _”You hush now”_  and  _”Is it a crime to like having a few big gems at my beck and call?”_  Bismuth had shrugged it off at the time, but now, with her wet petals spread like a tulip drooping open in summer, that last comment took on a whole new meaning.

  
The bushes shivered again, and so did she.

  
Bismuth’s flesh began to tremble, and she nervously ran her tongue around her mouth as she let her thoughts fumble around in a confused, clumsy mess. It was hard to focus with all the pheromones thrumming through her body, but she knew a few things for sure: one, Pearl was too smart to be hiding somewhere as obvious as that, and too agile to be rustling the leaves so much. Two, Earth animals didn’t have eyes that could glow through the underbrush like a gem’s. Three… sweet stars above, someone could  _see_  her!  **Someone could see her naked body!!**

  
_By Blue Diamond’s tits, she… she invited someone to spy on us!_ Bismuth quickly turned her head to hide her choked-back reaction in her shoulder.  _That sneaky little minx!_

  
Her cheeks were burning hot as lava, but she still chuckled through her blush. Her legs instinctively started to close, but she willed them back apart, letting out startled, sheepish barks of laughter. The attempt at modesty was useless at this point; whoever was snooping had already seen everything. Besides… they didn’t seem to be complaining. Bismuth was actually astonished at how minimal her embarrassment actually was; a lifetime’s worth of jokes about her appearance had left her with a deep-seated desire to keep her clothes around her at all times, like armour. It didn’t matter how many times her friends had lounged naked in the hot springs, cajoling her with ’ _come on, we all have the same parts_ ’—because, no, they didn’t, not really. It just wasn’t the same for those soft, pretty gems. They didn’t know what it was like to have to lumber through a delicate world with a big, unwieldy body and a face borne of utility instead of aesthetics. The first gem who’d ever pantsed her had ended up with a throatful of her own teeth, and even in front of a blind lover she’d been shy about stripping down… and yet, here she was, naked as a jaybird but, strangely, feeling little desire to pull her arms around herself.

  
Pearl admired her body… and, apparently, someone else did, too. Enough to stick around and watch, at least. Bismuth grinned, and allowed herself to cherish the tiny boost to her ego.

  
As gently as if she was scooping up a butterfly, she closed her fingers around her clit, letting out a hissing moan when the muscles in her belly spasmed.  _Okay, Pearl, you wanted to bring an audience? Then I might as well give ‘em a show._

  
Slowly and deliberately, she let go of her pussy and brought her clammy hand up to her face. She feinted moving it to her mouth, but paused when she heard the quiet ‘ _crack_ ’ of a twig snapping underfoot. Good. She had their attention now. Instead of licking her fingers, she wiped her palm off on her chest, making sure to smear across her gem—lingering over that spot Emmie was so partial to stroking—and down between her breasts. In the afternoon sunlight, it shone like a lick of silver down her steely body.

  
_Enough teasing,_  she thought as she eyed the lurking shadow.  _Time to get down to Bismuth._

  
Brushing her hand over her wet pubic hair, Bismuth began to toy with her labia, pushing them back and forth and tenderly tugging at the crimpled flesh. As she edged a fingertip around her entrance, she gave in, shuddering, to the surprising fantasies from somewhere in the deep recesses of her brain, each one more vivid and visceral than the last. She thought of Rose’s soft, milky arms wrapping around her neck. She thought of how Biggs’ hefty tits would feel on the split skin of her back. Crazy Lace stepping on her with those pointy stilettos. That new recruit with the gem on her thigh—what was her name again?—scratching at her with her polished claws. The two Amethysts that were inseparable… they’d try a tag-team, wouldn’t they? And then came the reverie that stunned her the most—an angry Snowflake flipping her over and taking her roughly, one brawny hand over her mouth, the other groping along the inside of her gem.

  
“Oh  _fuck,_ ” she hissed aloud. That was it. She couldn’t take it anymore.   
  


_Pearl told me not to, but…_  She let her thumb drift over the damp, silky panties.  _Screw it. Just a quickie, that’s all. I can rub a quick one out and wash off in the river before she comes back._

  
After a furtive glance at the shrubbery, Bismuth curled her fingers and began rasping them over her clit with all the ferocity of a rabid creature caught in a trap. The crunch of leaves suggested that her guest had slipped in surprise.

  
Her free arm was quaking too violently to support the weight of her body, so she sat back on her heels and thrust her left hand over the right. “Ah, ah,  _please!_ ” she shouted as her knees knocked against the ground, her bruised ass grinding on her feet. After shuffling around so that her spectator had a better view, she spared a moment to give her nipple a tweak, but in an instant her hand was right back down between her thighs. Her clit was raw and screaming, but she was so close, so  _goddamn_  close that she couldn’t take the time to be gentle.

  
Behind her scrunched eyelids she could almost see her orgasm streaming in like sunlight from over a mountaintop, and her thoughts fell to pieces in a jumbled jigsaw. The images came unbidden—she imagined a collar biting at her neck, the leash in Pearl’s hand, dozens of hands lasciviously running over her body, her lips and tongue and teeth busy with so many different textures and flavours, all of her friends and comrades around her—

  
_“FUCK!!”_

  
Her pelvis jutted up as the climax crashed into her, and her clenched fingers went limp as she splashed all over her lap and the grass below. The noises she made went from high-pitched howls, then down to cries, and finally to feeble moans and gasps; her cunt was still spurting erratically when the muscles in her torso gave out, and she flopped down onto her side, crushing her damp cheek into the grass.

  
“Oh, oh-oh-oh.” Even if her eyes had been open, she wouldn’t have been able to see; that scorching orgasm had hurtled by like a comet, and she was still blinded in its icy tail. Her legs were plastered together with slick and sweat, and she raised a shaky hand to her lips, tasting what she’d left behind. It wasn’t as good as Pearl’s, but it still felt so wonderful sliding over her tongue. “Oh, p-please. Please.”

  
And everything inside her went cold when she heard “Please  _what_ , pet?”  
  


Bismuth slowly opened one gummy eye, then the other, her belly flip-flopping. She was eye-level with Pearl’s feet, one of which was tapping in annoyance. 

  
“I… I, uh…” Bismuth looked down at her pruny fingers, then up at Pearl with a nervous grin. “This… uh… isn’t what it looks like…?” 

  
Pearl just folded her arms.  
  


Bismuth sighed and wiped the sweat off her forehead. “Okay. It’s exactly what it looks like.”

  
“I knew you’d disobey me,” she said icily as she reached into her gem with a faint glimmer. “I just  _knew_  it. That’s why I stayed to watch you.”  
  


Bismuth was already getting back to her knees, but her head whipped up at that revelation. “What?”

  
“You heard me. I was watching you the whole time.”

  
“But…” Pretending to scratch her nose, she hid a covert glance to the side behind her knuckles. The slow sinking of disappointment burst right back up into glee when she saw that their friend in the bushes was still there. Moving her eyes to the ground, she noticed stalks of half-crushed grass pricking back up from under Pearl’s footsteps… and she hadn’t gone anywhere near the interloper’s hiding spot. In fact, it seemed she’d gone in the opposite direction. Did Pearl even know…? 

  
Bismuth gulped and gulped until she forced the smile playing about her mouth into a fake grimace of displeasure; she dared to turn her face up to her Mistress, pulling the best pout she could muster. “Where?”  
  


“Never you mind that.”  
  


She decided to test the waters. “How the hell did you do that? I can spot someone hiding a mile away, Pearl!”  
  


Pearl’s gem dimmed when she withdrew what she’d been searching for, and she dropped a small cloth bag by her feet. In a quiet voice, just a note above a whisper, she said “Don’t you think I’ve spent most of my life learning how not to be seen?” Then, back in her usual timbre, “And it’s  _Mistress_.”  
  


“Right, right. Sorry.” She really had to strain to keep that smile from springing forth, and from under her locs she winked at the bushes.  _Pearl doesn’t know!_

  
After a few cautious pats to her inflamed ass, Bismuth put her hands back on the ground and assumed the position, even though she was still weak and unsteady. She must have looked ridiculous, all juddery and shuddering. As much as she wanted to ask about that hushed little confession that had slipped from Pearl’s lips, she knew better than to start digging when she was already in a hole. “So, uh, does this mean another whipping, Mistress?”  
  


“No.”  
  


With a rush of relief Bismuth lifted her head, but her smile quickly dwindled when she saw that the stony look on Pearl’s face hadn’t faltered—if anything, it had hardened.   
  


“I do enjoy watching you flounder about under my switch, pet, but what’s the point of a punishment if it doesn’t take?” She dropped to one knee and delicately untied the ribbon holding her bag shut. “The moment you started talking about ‘ _repentance_ ’, I knew I’d have to come prepared.”  
  


“That… kinda sounds ominous.”  
  


“Oh, it is.” She paused, one hand still in the bag, and angled her head downward until she met Bismuth’s eye. “What do you think I’m holding in my hand? You get three guesses.”  
  


Half an hour ago, she would have guessed—somewhat snidely—that Pearl would have come equipped with a chart, a book, or maybe a dry-erase board. But the throbbing in her ass and the faint taste of Pearl’s pussy that was still haunting the back of tongue led her to believe it was something decidedly less scholarly. “Um. Peppermint oil?”  
  


She had to bite her lip to keep from smirking at Pearl’s confusion. “ _Peppermint oil?_  What would I do with peppermint oil?”  
  


Looking down at her hands, Bismuth had to chew on the insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing out loud. If Pearl didn’t know, well, she certainly wasn’t about to tell her now. Pearl—and their guest, for that matter—didn’t need to be privy to the story of how she’d jumped like a jackrabbit after one of her more devious lovers had snuck a few drops of it onto her clit. “Uh… never mind. Just a bad guess.”

  
For a moment it looked like Pearl was going to press her further, but she shrugged it off, still fondling whatever she had hidden in her bag. “Try again, pet.”

  
“Hm…” Bismuth tried not to hiss when another cool breeze fanned the twin fires of her whip-marks and her engorged pussy. “Is it anything like the gift I gave to Garnet?”

  
Pearl’s brows knitted together as she frowned. “You gave her a gift?” she said with a tinge of jealousy.

  
“Well, technically, no.” Now she was chuckling, despite her best efforts. “It was actually for Ruby and Sapphire. I promised I wouldn’t tell a soul what it was… but I  _can_ tell you it was double-ended.” The perplexed look on Pearl’s face encouraged her to add “And it was eighteen inches long from tip to tip. Do the math, princess.”  
  


“Mistress!”  
  


“Mistress,” she corrected herself, eyeing the bushes. The fact that she had yet to feel an angry gauntlet punch meant that she could rule Garnet out as their peeper. Besides, she could only see two eyes glowing from between the thick branches.  
  


Pearl’s dainty hand moved around in the bag, and Bismuth heard the sound of something brittle and woody clattering to the bottom. “You get one more guess. Make it count, pet.”

  
“Hm.” She really had to think. Even though she’d only had a handful of lovers over the millennia, she was no stranger to kinky sex, and knew by now that most standard fetishes didn’t do much for her. Dripping wax was thousands of degrees cooler than lava, so candle play bored her. She was strong enough to break through restraints, but even so, after her capture she outright refused to ever be tied up again. And even though Emmie assured her that it wasn’t offensive, she always felt a bit guilty about being blindfolded.

  
Oh…

  
_…Emmie…_  
The pang came hard and fast, kicking at her like corruption, but it was so fleeting she could grit her teeth and pretend it hadn’t been there at all.  _Focus on Pearl, idiot._  “A gag?”

  
Pearl’s expression softened, and she allowed herself a small grin. “I like the way you think, pet,” she said tenderly. After retrieving a handful of—of something wooden?—from the bag, she rose to her feet and moved her free hand around, keeping her fingers cupped so that her treasure stayed a secret. “But you’re still wrong. I like your voice too much for that… especially when you’re begging for mercy.”  
  


Bismuth glanced up at her, a bit cock-eyed from embarrassment. “Uh… Mistress?”  
  


“My owne…” She coughed into her fist with a faint blue blush. “My former Mistress caught me huffing mercury once. She forced me to huff the entire syringe in one go, and it made me terribly sick. But I learned my lesson—never indulge without permission. And to this day, I can’t stand the smell of mercury.”  
  


Bismuth nodded, but her gaze was wandering back to the bushes, which had gone inert despite the still-hovering shadow. Everyone knew that Crazy Lace had a mercury problem. For Pearl to bring it up in this context seemed a little callous.   
  


“And you, Bismuth… you just can’t seem to keep from pleasuring yourself. So that’s how you’re going to be punished.”  
  


The earthy  _clack-clack_  noise drew her attention, and when she finally saw what Pearl was brandishing, Bismuth’s mouth went all dusty and dry. “What the HELL?!”

  
“Go on,” she said as she gestured, flicking the clothespin at her. “You want to come? Then you’ll come.”  
  


“But—!”  
  


Pearl grinned, dismissing her outer garments; the underwear between Bismuth’s hands disappeared with a twinkle, but her gaze was elsewhere, staring firmly at Pearl’s lovely, glimmering, pale body as she resumed the lingerie she’d donned earlier. She ran her left hand up her inner thigh, hovering over the lacy edge of her fresh blue panties, and then snapped her fingers to get her pet’s attention. “Bring yourself to orgasm.”  
  


“And…” She glanced beneath her body; the spend was drying on her legs, but her clit was still glistening. “And then what, Mistress?”  
  


“Don’t you dare question me. Just do it.”  
  


She groaned when her cunt involuntarily constricted, as if it was squeezing around fingers that weren’t yet there. “I-I’ll try.”  
  


“No, you won’t ‘try’. You’ll do it.”  
  


Pearl clacked the clothespin again, and Bismuth tried not to wonder  _too_  hard about what she was planning to do with it. “Okay, okay…”  
  


She took a deep breath, and then moved her hand to her groin, wincing when she felt a fresh bead of fluid start forming in her curls. Touching even a light fingertip against her clit felt downright  _scorching_ , so she backed off, thumbing around her labia instead, listening to the bushes rustle.

  
And then she froze. Her mind had been frayed since the beginning of the war, but after the last battle she’d been rent ragged, so her thoughts weren’t coming as clearly as they should have been; something occurred to her  _just now_ , which was far too late if it was correct… what if their peeper wasn’t a friend at all? What if Homeworld had sent a spy, some enemy agent who was likely right now considering herself either unlucky, or very much the opposite? Bismuth darted her eyes over to the bushes, that one fragment of a question beating at her like Pearl’s whip:  _What if? What if? What if?_  
  


“Don’t keep me waiting, pet,” Pearl warned.  
  


Bismuth could mouth out a few cusses, but she didn’t have the strength to vocalize them. A weird kind of helplessness settled over her when she suddenly, like a ship losing fuel halfway to its destination, just ran out of ideas with a splutter. She literally had no idea what she could do. She could tell Pearl, and embarrass and infuriate everyone involved, or she could…  
  


Or she could follow orders, do as she was told, and hope for the best. She  _was_  just a bismuth.  
  


She tried poking her index finger just at the gates of her entrance, her thumb on her perineum—but, to her embarrassment, her shyness did nothing to hold back another jolting, startling little climax. “Fuck!”

  
She was gasping, panting, hissing spit through her teeth; burning tears singed her eyes when Pearl leaned forward and clamped a clothespin onto the flesh of her breast. Oh. Oh, that stung. Even though Pearl had let go of it, the pain was somehow getting  _worse_ , going from a sharp pinch to a stabbing kind of agony. Bismuth stared at it swinging under her to the rhythm of her useless breaths; stars, she knew her breasts were sensitive, but this was a hundred times worse than the switch! If Pearl put one on her nipple, she’d probably jump right into orbit.

  
Helplessly, she gazed up at her Mistress, who looked very pleased with herself. “Again,” she ordered as she picked another pin from her bag.

  
“And… if… I… say… no?” she choked out.   
  


“Is that a risk you want to take?” She tapped her gem. “You have no clue what else I’ve got in here.”  
  


Bismuth, her face coated with salty sweat, met her Mistress’ eye. “Yeah, you  _sure_  can shove a lot of things inside you, can’t you?”

  
This time the slap was expected, and she barely made a sound. She did, however, huff and puff when the next clothespin gripped on her bottom lip. It was awkward and pinchy, but it couldn’t hold a candle to the searing pain in her breast.

  
“Come again,” Pearl said with a cool kind of dignity. “Bring yourself to orgasm again, right this minute, or you’ll learn about the padlock-enhanced device my Mistress used on me.” 

  
It was an empty threat—at least, so she assumed. Pearl couldn’t have the resources to procure that kind of gadget here on Earth, but… Bismuth didn’t have the presence of mind to argue. Long ago, her Homeworld supervisor had told her  _”Fear the gem who has a body rebuilt by things that have broken you”_ , and she’d learned the hard way not to call that bluff.

  
_Orange! Say it! Say orange!_ her mind screamed at her, and her breast seemed to agree. But she shook her head; losing face in front of Pearl would be bad enough, and she had an audience to consider, too. This was a matter of pride now. Either that, or just plain stubbornness. “O-k-kay, just let me…”

  
All she had to do was slap her hand back there, and her legs convulsed again. Her timing was lucky—she’d somehow hit the sweet spot, which meant her previous orgasms had a little echo. Even though it was too tame and tender to make a big, splashing mess, a tiny line of translucent fluid leaked out of her, flushing her lips with hot blood.

  
This time the clothespin pinched down on her nipple, and Bismuth let out a cry that scratched her throat like claws. A million times worse than the switch. A trillion!

  
“ _Again_ ,” Pearl said firmly as she flicked her finger against the pins, making them dance. “Come for me, pet.”

  
Somehow, she pushed, she pulled, she wrested another out. One tiny, pathetic squirt slipped through her knuckles, as if her cunt was starting to cry from the abuse.

  
Pearl tittered as she watched Bismuth wipe her hand on the ground, her eyes rolling around in their sockets. “One thing’s for sure—this patch of grass is going to survive if we have a drought.”  
  


“Not… funny!”  
  


White sparks swirled in her eyes, ricocheting in her head, when another clothespin compressed her free nipple. “M-M-Mistress!”  
  


“Again.”   
  


“I can’t!”  
  


Pearl’s dainty white fingers pushed the ends of the clothespin apart, sending a wail between Bismuth’s clenched teeth. Her dusky nipple was turning white from the pressure.  
  


“You’re holding back on me,” Pearl mused as she stroked her nails through her pet’s hair. “I heard from a reliable source that you were capable of twelve orgasms in one night.”

  
Her head jerked up and her jaw dropped. For a moment, the pain of the pins was forgotten. “ _Emmie told you that?!_ ”

  
She smirked. “I said a  _reliable_  source.”  
  


Had it come from anybody but Pearl, her reaction would have been much different. Even though her arms were juddering about like she was in an earthquake, Bismuth somehow found the strength to lift one and point a finger right at Pearl’s smug face. “…I’m gonna get you back for that.”

  
She easily smacked it away. “Let’s see another one, pet. Come for me, or the next pin goes on your clit.”

  
Bismuth heaved out a huge breath, a line of drool touching down from her pinned lip to the ground, and she slowly closed her eyes. There was no way,  _no way_ , she could force another orgasm from her bruised, swollen pussy now—but there was even  **less**  way she could take a clothespin to the clit! The poor thing already felt like a blister, and it was cowering back under her hood in fear.  
  


But her resolve, if nothing else, hardened when she heard Pearl’s chuckling. “Have you learned your lesson yet?”  
  


“I… make a point… of never learning,” she huffed, reaching back again.   
  


“So I’ve noticed.”  
  


The tone came across as snide, but Bismuth could see Pearl’s toes curling. She grinned; aw, the poor thing was getting flustered, wasn’t she? She’d always gotten a kick out of driving Pearl crazy—an easy enough task when clothed, but it was a hell of a lot more fun when naked.   
  


_Might as well pull out the big guns…_

_  
_So she used her shapeshifting powers, and let a big, hard cock slip out from just under where her button was hiding. It spilled into her cupping hand, and with an anguished sigh, she started to play her fist up and down the new length.

  
“Ah ha…” A hand to her mouth, Pearl tried, and failed, to hold back an impressed giggle. She caught herself quickly: “I, er, don’t recall telling you you were allowed to do that.”

  
Bismuth moaned. Her body was rocking back and forth, the clothespins clacking against their counterparts as she frantically bucked her hips. The head of her cock was smouldering, so she kept her palm on the shaft, but it did little to keep her legs from smacking together and pinching her bloated lips between them. “Didn’t… didn’t say… I couldn’t.”

  
Her hair was slipping from her headband and falling over her face, so Pearl brushed her fingers over Bismuth’s forehead, careful not to scratch her with her nails, and tucked a few of the locs back into place. “I should have known you’d be trouble, you little trickster,” she said fondly.

  
With a satisfied grunt, Bismuth slapped her cock against her belly, leaving an impressive patch of fluid in its wake. “Who’re you calling ‘little’?”

  
Pearl was laughing as she bent at the waist to kiss Bismuth’s sweaty cheek. “Good, pet. Very good. I’m proud of you. Keep going until you come again.”

  
That lustrous voice and the praise it carried sent a twitch from the base of her stem to the very tip, and Bismuth sucked her spittle between her teeth when she felt a tugging just a bit deeper. “I… I’m gonna—!”

  
All at once Pearl was down on her knees, one mollifying hand on her pet’s shoulder, the other extended under her body. “Last one, dearest,” she said quietly, and as her delicate fingers brushed up against the vein bulging on the underside of her shaft, she dug her nose into the thick, sweat-soaked dreadlocks, breathing in deeply. “Come into my palm.”

  
The wail that Bismuth let out shot tremors down her spine, but she did as she was told, and she could feel her labia and the hood of her clit wrenching around the pedicle she’d forced out of her body. It had been quite awhile since she’d had a dick, let alone  _come_ from it, and the climax was so sudden and gushing that it sent her tumbling to her elbow, skidding in the wet grass. She was choking on the adrenaline shot forth from so many orgasms, but as she tried to lift her chin again, her Mistress grabbed her by the hair…

  
…And her wicked grin was the last thing Bismuth saw before Pearl smacked her soiled palm down across her face. She actually  _squealed_  in surprise. 

  
“Yessss,” Pearl purred as she smeared the spend all over, from cheek to cheek, forehead to chin, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, wiped her hand clean on her dreadlocks. “Mmm. That’s a good look on you.”

  
“I….!” She threw her head back and forth, swaying between mortification and sick desire, but her efforts to pry her eyelids open were futile. She didn’t know the damned stuff could sting so much! “I can’t see!”

  
“Good. You deserve that blindfold.”  
  


_“Gah!”_ Admittedly, it wasn’t the first time she’d had someone slap a handful of come on her face—her sisters had odd senses of humour—but to have it like  _this_ , her very own fluids cementing her eyes shut, her nose stuffed with the bleachy smell and a stringy mess dribbling off her lips… it was almost too much. Even her hair, the one part of her appearance she took pride in, was all gummed up and gluey. She tried to wipe her hand over her eyes, but it just ground the mess in further. “This is disgusting!”

  
“Keep it there,” Pearl said from somewhere behind her, and Bismuth whined as she reluctantly put her hand back on the ground. She felt Pearl’s narrow fingers, already dry and cool again, as they trailed down her spine, and her other hand gently cupped her aching ass, prying her apart just enough to let another small dribble leak from her slit. “You’ll stew in your own juices until I’m done with you.”

  
It wasn’t until Pearl rubbed a finger from the base of her pussy to her mons that she realized she’d somehow already lost her cock in her panic. Being “blindfolded” had never been so disorienting before. She had to rely on her other senses—her hearing, which could still pick up the shuffling in the shrubs—but, most importantly, she still had her sense of touch, and her brain was emblazoned, like an Era One brand, when her Mistress dug her fine-pointed teeth into the back of her neck.

  
Bismuth went down, hard and fast, into the dirt.   
  


Pearl jostled on top of her, but she didn’t let the flesh out of her jaws. It was more than a display of dominance; this was a functional move, and it vaguely disturbed her that Pearl was willing to do something so base.

  
Her teeth staining green from grinding on the grass, Bismuth clenched her backside against her lover and stilled, drops of sweat running through the muck on her face. Gems could call themselves as evolved as they wanted, but they never really outgrew their programming.

  
The very first metalloids were purely experimental, but even though they were relegated to builders and labourers, they’d been created with potential breeding in mind. Their rowdy natures could be easily tamed by a  _’mating grip’’,_  a sharp bite to the scruff. Bismuths came after the earlier Seleniums and Antimonies, and even though Kindergartens had taken over by that point, that old instinct was still there, still buried in their chemical structures. It was one of the main reasons she’d grown her hair past regulation length as soon as she’d switched sides. She could still speak and move, but technically, now that she was face-down and ass-up, that toothy clamp on her neck kept her from throwing her mate off her back, no matter the reason.  
  


And then Pearl gave her a reason.  
  


Under her whimpers there came the glimmer of shapeshifting. She was trembling,  _aching_ , but between her puffy lips, she felt something warm and firm nudge at her, nosing at the gates of her sex.  
  


Pearl wanted inside.  
  


_No!_

_  
_Bismuth opened her mouth and chewed at the grass. She could put her head down. She could submit. She could learn Safe Words and push her face into the sheets and laugh and giggle when familiar fingers played at her calves, but… but she couldn’t just open herself up like that. Emmie had unlatched the safeguard to her boundaries, but only after Bismuth had willingly given her the key. Pearl had picked the lock.

  
And Pearl was still biting her neck. 

  
_“Hngh,”_  her Mistress grunted between her teeth as she prodded. They’d gone beyond language now. Bismuth knew what she was asking.

  
_Orange!_  her consciousness blared through the reflexes that had been bred into her.  _ORANGE!_

_  
_But her legs spread further, allowing entrance. Her body had just said ‘green’.

  
Pearl’s thumb brushed softly through the crease of her ass, giving her a moment of tremoring pleasure before she made her way in. Bismuth immediately clenched, frightened, but the penetration wasn’t painful; it was smoothed by her wetness, and in a dim part of her mind she realized that Pearl had chosen to shift herself a member that wasn’t needlessly large. A slight consideration, but it was more than welcome. Nice, actually. Her cunt felt so raw and exposed that she swore she could feel every inch, every little detail, every tiny ridge and bump and vein. And that cock, the one perfectly-crafted just for her, curved up in  _just_  the right place to hit her G-spot. 

  
Pearl released the scruff of her neck with a triumphant grin when she felt Bismuth’s moan vibrating through their joined bodies.  _“There,”_  she whispered as she gave an experimental thrust. “There, doesn’t that feel good?”

  
She couldn’t speak. She could barely think. She tried to blot it out, but something in her mind was blaring like a siren:  _She’s inside me she’s inside me she’s inside me…_

  
The tilt of her pet’s hips encouraged her, so, bracing both hands on her wide, grey thighs, Pearl pulled out just an inch before pushing back in, all the while touching at the marks her switch had left. Different gems healed at different rates, and she was pleased to see that a builder’s wounds didn’t stitch up quite as quickly as a soldier’s. Kissing her neck just under the place she’d darkened with a bite, Pearl started to pump her pelvis against Bismuth’s ass, sighing and purring against her skin. “Oh. Oh, Bismuth. Oh, that’s it. That’s  _perfect.”_

  
Bismuth rubbed her face into her hands as she whimpered, not noticing how the drying spend was starting to pill away from her eyes. ‘Perfect’? She’d never been  _that_  before. She’d been familiar with ‘good enough for now’, and just once had been actually desired. But ‘perfect’… ‘perfect’ was enough to make her lean backwards against Pearl’s skinny hipbones, sucking her in with every swing of her body. “M… muh…” She put her fist into her teeth and chewed. “More!”

  
“Ooooh…” Pearl’s hand drifted to Bismuth’s chest, and she plucked away the clothespins. “Oh, you’re a  _furnace!”_

  
Bismuth gasped when she felt those dastardly clutches release from her body, and she started to mewl when the stabs of pain rushed away on waves of pleasure, one by one. “Please!” 

  
Fine beads of saliva dripped onto her back, and Pearl took her again by the scruff, this time with her fingers, the nails digging just enough to signal her intent. When she palmed her breast, she soothed over the ballooning edges of the bruises, encouraging the feeling to come back to her nipples with light caresses. She leaned down to nuzzle against her pet’s temple, murmuring endearments.

  
Bismuth made garbled noises into the ground as her matted hair swung across her face, her hips swiveling around in a circle to the beat of Pearl’s pounding. The bite of light she initially mistook for another adrenaline surge, but when her blurred vision settled on her bitten fist she realized she’d opened an eye. The dry spend was crusting in her eyelashes, but at least she had a sliver of sight again! Weakly, she turned her head and propped her cheek on her hand so she could stare at Pearl, and… oh, damn. No matter what she did, or how she did it, her Mistress was still so beautiful as she had her way, her wet breasts bouncing, her fingers dancing, pretty jewels of sweat running from her forehead, over her gem, down to her cheeks.

  
“You’re just… you’re just hot, wet silk…” she moaned, Bismuth’s pussy pulling at her like a shy, stuttering mouth. “Oh, sweet thing. You’re  _perfect.”_

  
A sharp sob hitched at her chest, and Bismuth brought a few weak fingers up to her gem. It was warm and glowing. “Fuck me,” she whispered. “Please, please fuck me, Pearl, fuck me!”

  
And, for once, she didn’t correct her. She had little need of the ‘Mistress’ title now that Bismuth’s sensitive scruff was in biting range. She had her where she wanted her.

  
“You’re doing such a good job, pet. You’re so well-behaved.” She withdrew almost all the way, leaving just her tip at the squeezing ring of muscle, then slammed right back in. Bismuth screamed, and then screamed again when she gripped her clit. It was jumping under her thumb.

  
Groaning, Bismuth shakily poked her finger into her gem and began to massage over the ridges and furrows. Pearl wouldn’t be able to see it, but their audience might get a thrill out of watching a rockjob. And  _fuck_ did it feel good—in part because of the warmth, the intimacy, but mostly because of how forbidden it was back home. Even with everything going on, every crazy thought battering her brain, Bismuth had to laugh—stars, how many times had she been smacked and yelled at to  _“Keep your dirty hand out of there”?_

  
Pearl’s nose dusted over her neck, but instead of gripping again, she bent down to touch her gem against the back of Bismuth’s head. Still rutting against her, re-opening some of the split skin on her ass, she took her pet in a bear hug and squeezed her breasts, pressing them together so firmly that the very edges came to touch her outer facets. It was as close as she’d ever come to having cleavage, and for a split-second Bismuth wondered why. That had never happened before… her tits just weren’t big enough to reach that far. But—

  
“Do you think you can come for me again, my darling?” Pearl said so quietly into her hair. Her body had stilled save for the tendril curling inside of her, which was buzzing with long-withheld excitement. “Just once more,” she soothed. “Once, together.”

  
“I, guh, gonna,” she gasped out. “Can’t—I— _please—”_

  
“Shh, shh, it’s fine.” A soft, pliant hand rose up from Bismuth’s breast to rest on the finger she still had working at her gem; although Pearl didn’t penetrate any further than she already had, she gave her pet’s knuckle a firm push, moving her deeper in, past the lightening colours, all the way to the very back wall, buried somewhere deep in her chest. At the same time, she brought her other hand down on the one Bismuth was using to hold the weight of their bodies and intertwined their fingers, small white slivers winding through the dark lines that eclipsed them. “I’m close, pet. _So_  close. Just squeeze your softness on me, and we’ll come together.”

  
For a moment there was stillness, and Bismuth tilted her head back against her lover. She could feel every sensation—everything as small as the semen pulling at her cheeks as it dried, everything as overwhelming as Pearl’s cock putting its insistent pressure on her walls—everything was just pelting down on her like the crashing of the waterfall, and just like the rocks at its base, she could feel herself eroding. She squeezed, and felt Pearl quiver inside her, atop her, all around her.  
  


_I can’t believe it!_  she thought as she felt a twinge in the deepest part of her cramping cunt.  _I’m coming again?! If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was…_

_  
_The gasp only made it partway out her throat. She had very good reasons for being so wary of letting a lover penetrate her—the most practical of which was her irregularity. Unlike most gems, she couldn’t rely on the calendar to predict her cycles; she could get plagued three times in as many months, and then be fine for another two years. It always snuck up as a nasty surprise with very little warning until she was in the thick of it. And now…

  
Pearl took her scruff again, and from inside her ring of muscle, Bismuth felt the base of that slender cock swell up. She only had a few seconds, a minute at most, before it turned into a full-fledged knot.

  
“Wait!”  
  


The guttural grunt told her everything she needed to know: Pearl wasn’t paying as much attention as she should. Bismuth shot a frantic look at the bushes; the leaves were trembling slightly, moving against the wind, but their spy seemed to be as paralyzed as her. She could gesture for help, but that would have to be an absolute  _last_ resort; after everything she’d been through, she couldn’t swallow much more pride.

  
“Wait, Pearl!” She swung an arm behind her and landed a few weak swats, but she couldn’t directly fight under the force of the mating grip. “Hold up!”

  
It backfired. To her dismay, she heard Pearl snarl and shift around above her, digging her teeth in deeper. By twisting her head around, it must have felt like she was trying to dislodge the grip, which triggered a primal, reactionary response from Pearl’s subconscious:  _hold on tighter._

  
“Ah, shit,” she panted. She was going to climax, she could tell, and in this position she couldn’t hold back—and that would just squeeze around Pearl’s cock, massaging it and tipping her over the edge, too. “Orange!”

    
The hand she had in her gem was wrenched away as Pearl grabbed her by the wrist and slammed her arm back down beneath them, pinning it in place. She wouldn’t usually have had the strength to do that, but their base natures had taken over. All Bismuth had left now was her voice, and it was pulling around helplessly, lifting from alto to soprano and higher still.  
  


“Orange! Listen! Orange!”

  
Her inner thighs were so soaked that the fresh gust of wetness felt like a high tide. She was staggering right on the precipice of climax, and got a swift kick off the edge when she felt Pearl’s member swelling and lifting up inside her.

  
She didn’t need rational thought to understand the sudden panic. She reacted as best she could.

  
“Red! Red!” she screamed when she sensed the first glutted pump deep, deep inside. “Fucking red, Pearl,  _red! **I mean it!!** ”_

  
And, just like most things in her life… it was two seconds too late.   
  


Pearl’s hand stuttered on hers and she tried to yank back, but her body had already given in. Bismuth’s did too, aided in some unholy way by the hot gushes she could feel pooling in her core, and even the strength of the grip on her scruff couldn’t keep her thick muscles from sapping below her. She carried Pearl down with her as she collapsed, and they both moaned through the first inglorious climax they’d shared as Bismuth sank down to the loam, every fibre of her being pulsing uncontrollably as she bobbed on the waves. It was the kind of shock to one’s system that came from the skimming back and forth from the peaks of pain and desire, and she surrendered.

  
She had so many thoughts, soft and fuzzy, as they gentled there together in the aftermath with salted bodies and dirty elbows. Past lovers, crushes, and head-turners floated by like clouds in the wintertime. She remembered each ‘no’, each ‘maybe’, each ‘yes’, each  _‘please_ ’ as the contractions of her sex slowly pushed Pearl’s dwindling member back out. She recalled every first and every last. Every sunset she’d seen, every sunrise she’d described. How many orgasms she’d shared, how few she’d faked. How many times she’d been willing. Or reluctant. Or otherwise. It all came back, memories ensnarled, and for a brief moment she thought she had a flash of something—something that had, for a split-second, lifted the veil between the two of them, like a different kind of fusion.

  
They stayed with limbs locked together as the uneven white noise of the falls crashed beyond them, the branches sifting and the river rushing in the dull echo of the wind. It was Pearl who came to her senses first.

  
“Oh, Bismuth…” It didn’t take much to roll her over, but meeting her eye was something else. “B-Bismuth,” she stammered as she felt around her face with one hand, the other thumbing where their pubic hair meshed, “Bismuth, I… I didn’t mean to…”

  
Her “pet” lifted her chin to the sky as she wheezed; her eyes were now both free from the blindfold of shame, but she wasn’t looking at anything but the insides of her eyelids.

  
“I didn’t mean to do that! It was an accident!” Pearl blurted as she rushed her hands over the sticky locs. “I… I  _heard_  you, trust me, I did, but I…”

  
She sighed out in relief when Bismuth’s big, rough palm came to rest on her cheek, and a few fresh tears welled in her eyes as Pearl gazed down at her, matching that growing smile with her own. She’d hit a boundary and tripped over it, but her beloved looked calm and beatific, glowing and warm from her attention. 

  
Pearl gently squeezed the hand atop hers and moved her mouth to kiss her palm. “Oh… I love you, Bismuth.”

  
She nodded blissfully. “I love you too, Emmie.”

  
…  
  


It took a few minutes—which was far too long—for Bismuth to realize exactly what she’d just said, but when her eyes flew open in horror, she could see, plain as day, that it had hit Pearl even faster and harder and with far more brutality.

  
“Oh, I…” She tried to touch that soft, pale face again, but Pearl sharply turned away. “Pearl, I… I’m sorry, I…”

  
“No,” she said stiffly as she rose. “ _I’m_  sorry.”

  
“Wait, I…” Weakly, she lifted a stiff, cramping arm, but Pearl was already on her feet, already dusting herself off. Bismuth’s body was still ablaze on the outside, but deep inside her, in the pit of her gem, her soul, she was frozen. “I didn’t mean—! It was force of habit, I—!”  
  


With a fragile kind of dignity, Pearl pulled her hands to her chest and re-summoned her outfit—not the lace and garters from before, but the demure uniform she wore around comrades. The colours seemed somehow muted. “Thank you,” she said politely, looking away, “And I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

  
Bismuth tried to lift herself up on her elbow, but she was too weak, too weighted down now to pull herself from the dirt. “Pearl!”  
  


“We should be sparring in an hour or so. I… I hope I’ll see you then.”  
  


And that was it. There wasn’t even a ‘goodbye’ as she walked away, leaving Bismuth there, stickied with her blood and their fluids, with nothing but her bruises and the discarded clothespins for company. She whimpered, her head back on the grass, and rubbed her palm over her forehead. The after-effects of what she’d just been danced through were weighing on her body like leaden shackles, but the clamps on her mind were much worse.  
  


With an angry shout, Bismuth slammed a fist down by her side. “DAMMIT!” she screamed, not even caring if Pearl was still within earshot. Wasn’t it enough she’d just learned what loss and grief were without having to have it  _doubled?_  Why was it  _never enough??_  
  


Since she was stuck in a weird, timeless trance, she didn’t know how long she stayed like that, her face to the clouds, a finger between her teeth, but eventually… she realized that, once again, she had company. This time, of a different variety.

  
“Thanks a lot,” she muttered to her uninvited guest. “You were a big help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all... do NOT use peppermint oil or clothespins in your BDSM. Actually, do NOTHING like this in your BDSM.
> 
> Secondly... WHO'S IN THE BUSHES?!?! :D Please, please let me know who you hoped was watching! Because, depending on the responses I get (and/or the best argument presented) I just might write a side-story from that character's perspective!


	7. Breaking Ground

Her footfalls were muffled in the grass, but they still crashed in her head like thunderclaps.

For once, when the bad thoughts came, Pearl didn’t try to snuff them out; she knew they’d gather and come crashing down in such a storm that they’d become a wordless rumble she could ignore more easily than if she paid attention to each one in turn. She didn’t fidget with her outfit, but she still kept her hands extended stiffly out from her body to keep her balance as she walked on unsteady feet.

Out of the roar, a fragment of a thought poked at her mind: _‘Emmie’. She called you ‘Emmie’._

Pearl tightened her elbows to her waist, trying not to clench her jaw too hard. _Just a slip-up. Everyone makes mistakes,_ she reminded herself. _It’s not like you’ve never blurted out ‘Rose’ at the worst possible moment._ But it didn’t seem fair. Bismuth was haunted by someone who died, and she was haunted by someone who was heartbreakingly near---but _she_ hadn’t slipped up! In fact, she’d been so laser-focused on the strapping beauty beneath her that no one else had entered her mind---

Her leg wobbled under her, and she stopped mid-stride. It dawned on her that not once---not when they’d been under the volcano, not when they’d been under the trees---not _once_ had she thought of Rose while in Bismuth’s charms.

Was that a first?

She rubbed a still-sticky palm over her eyes and tried to calm herself with thin breaths pulling through her nostrils. She’d chosen to take the long way back to base to give them both the space they needed, not even turning when she thought she heard a snippet of a conversation behind her; that had been an hour ago, and she was almost late for practice. It would be hard enough to show her face now without scurrying in late, so she quickly picked up her pace and built a little box in her brain where she could temporarily stuff all the festering emotions until she was ready to deal with them.

It was low tide when she finally stepped onto the beach, and the briny smell of wet sand and seaweed felt both refreshing and painful, like the scent of distant sex. There was something different in the air, something more sparkling and electric, and Pearl smiled faintly. Sparring was always different when they weren’t warming up for battle. With enemies on the horizon the Crystal Gems acted like humans in the eye of a storm, tense and worried; but now that they were free---however briefly---from that hovering shadow, her comrades were laughing, running about freely, bouncing off each other and kicking up wide scuffs of sand. A few of them were experimenting with new fusions, and even if they only lasted a few seconds, they were met with cheering and applause.

Her throat suddenly felt dry and swollen when she saw a new fusion burst forth in a glittering green. As dedicated as Emmie had been to learning how to read by feel, her frustration would sometimes take over and she would ask Bismuth to spin her around until they formed the hulking, corn-rowed fusion who could read Pearl’s neat handwriting if her face was close enough to the page.

Pearl pulled her lips into her mouth as her mind lingered over the few, scattered memories she had of Maw-Sit-Sit. It hadn’t dawned on her until now that she’d never see _her_ again, either. She thought that by now she’d understand how grief could send out ripples like an imploding star, but apparently each loss was its own disaster…

 _Poor Bismuth… has she even had the chance to think about Mawsy?_ Pearl hesitated near the water’s edge, the surf foaming by her ankles, as she scanned the crowd. _Where is Bismuth, anyway? She should be here by now…_

“Pearl!”

Oh. That voice always felt like balm on a wound. Pearl snapped out of her contemplation and turned her now-glowing face up to meet Rose’s, reaching out to grasp her soft hand.

“I thought you weren’t going to show,” she said as she tucked her chin against Pearl’s temple, one arm wrapping her up in an embrace. “Come join the fun!”  
She pressed her face into a thick ringlet and pulled the scent in, enjoying the closeness. “Oh, Rose… I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Her eyes twinkling, Rose gave her hand a light squeeze, her thumb brushing over Pearl’s callouses, and guided her to the zig-zag that was serving as the front line. “Then, come!”

Pearl didn’t pull her hand out of the gentle clasp until the very last minute; she was keenly aware of the dozens of eyes trailing after her, but at least with Rose there by her side, no one dared speak the snide words they obviously had on the tips of their tongues.

_Well, it’s not the first time you’ve been in the spotlight, is it?_

Shaking that voice form her head, Pearl quietly fell in line behind Rose and took a defensive position, watching Biggs as she began to call out the orders. Everything had a veneer of normalcy, and yet it still felt to Pearl like she was staring at her life through a warped window.

“Attention, soldiers! This one’s a new drill, so get your heads out of your butts and picture this!” Biggs barked as she clanked her fist against her prosthetic hand. “Citrines at one o’clock!”

And everyone paused when Crazy Lace hollered back “Roger that, love! What do we do til then?”

Biggs had seen that coming, of course, so she pointed a robotic finger at the Agate, smirking. “Someone shut her up before she hurts herself!”

While one of the Amethysts scooped Crazy Lace up in a noogie, the rest fell into the Epsilon Formation. Pearl hung back, summoning her spear as she watched Biggs swing herself around to knock both forward attackers off course. “Try better next time!” she screamed through her huge smile. “Now, Sidereal Rhombus!”

As the troops pulled back to reform, Pearl shifted to lean on her left foot, ready to jump in---but her spear slipped from her sweaty hand when she saw a freshly-washed Bismuth come rumbling up behind the lieutenant. Her lips popped open, but before she could speak, Bismuth grabbed Biggs in a great big bear hug from the back. As the diminutive quartz screeched in surprise, Bismuth hooted with laughter and ruffled her short, greasy hair.

With a squawk, Biggs disentangled herself and whirled around, a fist readied in the air; it only lowered a bit when Bismuth greeted her with her least-hated nickname---“Hey there, Pumpkin! Hope these assholes aren’t giving you too much trouble.”

Pearl frowned. Either Bismuth was putting on a brave front, or she’d just… shrugged everything off. Intuition told her it was the former.

“Oh. So _nice_ of you to join us, Bismuth,” Biggs snarled as she pushed her bangs off her forehead and thumbed over her shoulder. “Want to fall in line, or are you gonna fuck someone else before you do?”

The sunny look on her face clouded like a winter afternoon, but she didn’t retort. To Pearl’s surprise, neither did anyone else---not even Rose, who really should have called that out.

Bismuth just shuffled her way towards the assembled gems, her mouth an unmoving line, and Pearl leaned forward, trying to catch her eye, without quite knowing what she was hoping to see---a smile? That likely wouldn’t happen. A wink? A frown? _Some_ kind of acknowledgment?

But Bismuth stubbornly refused to glance her way, even as Pearl’s attempts were getting more pronounced to the point of ridiculousness; she ultimately gave up when she heard Biggs’ harsh baritone ringing out: “Okay, you worms! _Freeform!_ ”

Pearl remained motionless even as she felt a rush of wind around her, the spray of sand biting at her calves; her friends were all scrambling into mini skirmishes, each in a desperate attempt to out-do the other, some with their weapons out but most just turning into pinwheels of flying fists and feet. No one made a move to charge at her, and Pearl nervously fingered her spear when she saw a wild-eyed Bismuth bolting towards Garnet. She wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved or jealous.

Her eyes stayed active even though her body was still; while making sure no one could sneak up on her, she kept her primary focus on Bismuth. _Poor thing,_ she thought absently. Her stance was sloppy, her hair was wild, and her voice was shrill; she was obviously more distracted than she’d initially let on. Pearl gulped. Those jerky movements could have been from her pants chafing over her whip-marks… or possibly from a different kind of unhealed wound.

Bismuth swung her hammers above her head, which gave Garnet an opening; she took it, and charged, gauntlet-first, towards the weak spot her opponent had revealed. Her light chuckle was muffled under Bismuth’s exaggerated war cry, and for a moment Pearl hunched into herself as she waited for the final blow. It was stupid, foolhardy even, for Bismuth to leave herself exposed like that---but, inexplicably, at the very last second Garnet’s fist wobbled out of the arc of attack and went flopping to her side instead of slamming into Bismuth’s gut.

“Hah!” Bismuth crashed a hammer an inch from Garnet’s toes. “I win!”

Pearl put a hand over her gasp. It was unusual for Garnet to flake out during a fight, and to lose so deliberately was completely out of character. Something was wrong. Pearl watched helplessly as Bismuth took the fusion in a headlock and began to jostle her around, laughing.

“Does the Gruesome Twosome need some couples therapy? Ha! You’re losin’ it, Garnet!”

She apparently didn’t see the purple glow her third eye was emanating. After some deliberate ruffles to her curls, Bismuth shook her free and gave her shoulder a friendly slap; she’d opened her mouth for another round of teasing, but the curt look on her friend’s face quickly shriveled her smile to a pucker. “What?” The bravado she tried to pull was obviously strained. “You’re not a sore loser, are you?”

“Bismuth.” Her lower eyes closed, and Garnet made a sharp, jabbing motion off towards the sand dunes with the hand that was flashing Sapphire’s gem. “Let’s talk.”

She faltered a bit, but held her ground. “Why? Anything you got to say to me you can say in front of everyone.”

“Bismuth.” She grabbed her wrist and began to yank. “Let’s. Go. And. Talk.”

“Garn…”

Pearl was so wrapped up in watching them depart that a light, tickling finger running up her spine made her screech like a banshee. She spun around, spear flashing, to meet Snowflake’s curious gaze. “Don’t startle me like that!”

She diffidently pushed her weapon away. “What’s going on?”

“I…” Pearl glanced over her shoulder, watching Garnet as she tugged her lover---her _ex-_ lover---away from sparring range. It looked like she was making a concerted effort to pull Bismuth out of earshot. “I have no idea.”

Snowflake lifted a hand to block out the sun. “Looks like Garnet’s trying to tell her something.”

“Well, yes, obviously.” She had to purse her lips to keep in her temper. “And it’s rude. She shouldn’t be playing favourites like that.”

“She’s not…”

“Yes she is!” She sighed and looked down at where her shadow was mingling with Snowflake’s. “I thought we were done with secrets…”

Snowflake clicked her tongue. “Mm. Give me a minute.”

When Pearl lifted her eyes to Snowflake’s face, she realized exactly why the huge obsidian was squinting like that. “Wait. Are you reading their lips?”

“Hush!”

She turned away, watching the now-distant figures; Garnet was, predictably, standing with cool stoicism, her arms folded, while Bismuth was animatedly gesturing at her. Glancing back at Snowflake, she had to frown when she saw the concentration darkening her brow. “Why would you need silence to read li---”

Her hand jerked up. “I said _hush!_ ”

Reluctantly, Pearl went back to looking at the argument taking place just a few yards too far away to be heard. She nervously picked at her leggings when she saw Bismuth throw her hands above her head. “Snowflake, what are they---”

But she didn’t get the chance to finish. Bismuth’s full-throated, howled-out _“OH **HELL** NO!”_ was enough to flatten any conversation from coast to coast.

Pearl barely had the time to mumble “ _Oh no”_ before Snowflake shot out from behind her like a bullet, and although she reached out grab her coattails, she tumbled on her face before she could stop her. She was still spitting out sand when Rose’s hand fell on her shoulder, pulling her back up.

 

“No!” Pearl wailed as she watched a screaming Snowflake tackle Bismuth. “Not again!!”

But the realization hit even before she heard Rose’s quiet whisper---though Snowflake had just flung her thick arms around Bismuth’s waist and hefted her over her shoulder, she wasn’t on the attack. In fact, she seemed almost… delighted? It was so unexpected, so incongruous, that Pearl’s already shaken mind just kind of fell in a jumble.

“W-what’s going on, Rose?” she stuttered as she tried not to wince away from Snowflake’s air-rippling squeals of joy.

“I… I think everything’s okay, Pearl,” Rose murmured, a hint of a smile in her eyes as she helped Pearl steady her shaking feet. “I think she’s actually happy.”  
Pearl nodded, but she flinched when another caterwaul came rolling down the dunes.

“BI-I-I-I-I-SMUTH!” Snowflake’s screams were even louder than Bismuth’s as she spun her around like a propeller. “Oh, _BISMUTH!_ ”

 

With an indignant squall, Bismuth beat her fists against her friend’s wide back. “Put me down, you freak!” She kicked and cursed, and even beckoned towards Garnet a few times---but the latter just stood by, idly watching with a bemused grin that seemed to grow every time Snowflake burst into a fresh wave of laughter.

Pearl drew her spear closer to her body and looked up at Rose with watering eyes. “We need to do something. This isn’t right.”

Rose smiled down at her with an annoying kind of tranquility. “Snowflake seems to be fine.”

She turned to stare. With every rotation she caught a quick glimpse of Bismuth’s face, and each time her expression was different. “But Bismuth isn’t! I don’t know what just happened, but---”

“Pearl.” With a steady, loving touch on her jaw, Rose turned Pearl’s head around to face her, and after a second, her body followed suit. Rose placed her hands on the thin, shivering arms, and stepped closer so that her heavy curls hung around them like a curtain. “Sometimes you just have to trust that everything will work out for the better.”

“But---”

“No.” She kissed the bridge of her nose. “Bismuth may be upset now, and probably will be for awhile, and you have to respect that. It’s a process.”

“I need to help her _now!_ ”

“No you don’t,” she said with certitude. “Let her be. What do you think will happen if you push her too far?”

It was gradual, but their expressions changed at the same time---Pearl’s to a squinched confusion, and Rose’s to embarrassment.

“Rose… what did you mean by that?”

“We’ll talk later,” she said, and added what felt like a condescending pat on Pearl’s shoulder, her eyes on the commotion a few dunes away. Pearl turned, too, just in time to watch Bismuth kick herself free of Snowflake’s grasp; before she got scooped up again, she growled something unintelligible and then went stomping off, untwisting her apron straps and smoothing out her pants. Garnet let her leave unhindered, but she did lean forward to murmur something to a still-bouncing Snowflake.

“I’m going to go see what this is about before it gets any worse,” Pearl sniffed, but just as she was taking a step forward, Garnet’s head snapped around, and, somehow, all of her eyes locked onto Pearl’s. She was no way near as adept as Snowflake at lip-reading, but Garnet made a point of enunciating clear enough for her to understand:

**“Let. It. Go.”**

 

~

After the altercation on the beach, Bismuth had retreated to the bedroom she’d shared with Emmie and hadn’t emerged for three days. Most considered it a hysterical overreaction, but a handful of the Crystal Gems thought her prolonged sulk might be justified. Pearl was inclined to agree, even though she was dying to know the details---but she just couldn’t pry any information out of Garnet, who was her usual taciturn self, and the only other gem who’d been privy to their conversation had apparently been sworn to secrecy. It ate at Pearl, burned her to her core, the way Snowflake would fucking _giggle_ whenever asked about it, as if she was just bursting at the seams with an inexplicable delight.

“It’s up to Bismuth,” she’d say with all her pointy teeth flashing. “She’ll tell you when she’s ready, _hee-hee-hee_.”

But Pearl’s patience was a finite resource and by the third day she found herself hovering outside Bismuth’s door, a bowl in one hand and the other poised to knock.

“Bismuth?”

She said it so softly that she wasn’t sure if it would be heard, so she tried again:

“Bismuth? It’s Pearl. I, uh…”

From inside she heard the rustling of sheets, but no vocalization.

“There’s some good news,” she ventured as she trailed her fingertips down towards the knob. “While we---uh---were _occupied,_ apparently Rose received some intelligence that Homeworld is backing off its direct attacks on Earth for the time being.” She glanced down at her bowl and nudged the spoon as she struggled to find words. “It’s not all good news---this means we have to keep an eye out for what they’re planning to hit us with next---but at least now you’ll have some down time to, er…” Luckily, she caught herself before saying _‘lick your wounds’_. “Process everything. Y-you know. Um.”

She glanced away, down at the stripe of afternoon sunlight spilling in through the smudgy window. “May I please come in?”

Finally, Bismuth spoke. “What do you want me to say? ‘Green’?”

Pearl had to will her body to curl out of the flinch. “A-alright, I’m coming in.”

The first thing that hit her when she creaked the door open was the smell; although not unpleasant, it was heavy and musty, full of dust and salty traces of tears. The curtains were drawn, and Bismuth was huddled up in a rumpled cocoon of the sheets she’d pulled halfway off the bed. Aside from that, she hadn’t disturbed a thing; everything was as it had been the day Emmie died, preserved like a mausoleum.

Pearl peeled her lips back in a forced mein of geniality. “You, uh, you look well!”

Bismuth didn’t answer.

Even though the floor was clear, Pearl still felt the need to gingerly inch her way in, as if there was some invisible veil she might ruffle. It took her a moment of cautiously clearing her throat before she could speak again, her voice sounding far too jarring in the still room. “I brought you something.”

Slowly, Bismuth lifted her head and eyed Pearl’s little peace offering. She did not look impressed.

“B… Biggs actually made it,” she said shyly as she held the bowl out towards her. “It’s fruit salad! I know you don’t like pomegranate seeds, so I picked them all out. Just for you!”

She just stood there, weak and impotent, watching with a stupid smile slathered on her face as Bismuth stared at the bowl for a few long moments; her dark, besieged eyes flicked up to Pearl’s, and after they lingered a second too long, she turned away again with her lips thinned.

Pearl pulled her elbows back against her ribs, but didn’t let her gaze wander. Once it became abundantly clear the bowl wasn’t going to be taken from her grip, she leaned down and placed it on the ground by Bismuth’s hip. “I. Um. I’ll just leave it here.”

Nothing.

She cleared her throat and nervously looked around her. Though she’d been in this room many times before---always after nervously knocking---it had never been in any way hers; she’d always been an interloper in this territory of lovers, but never before had she felt like her mere presence was hostile.

Tucking her legs beneath her, Pearl sank to her knees a hand’s-reach away from Bismuth’s side, but she didn’t make a move to touch her. “G… grief…” It began with an awkward stumble, so she coughed away the bit of phlegm in her throat and tried again. “Grief is complicated, Bismuth…”

She pulled the blankets around her tighter.

With a sigh, Pearl looked down at her hands and began moving them around aimlessly. “You just… you just sort of fumble around from feeling to feeling, and you never really…”

When she sensed Bismuth bristle away from her, she flopped both palms down on her knees and gave up. “You know what, Bismuth? Grief is like a supervoid. A rip in existence. A flaw in the Universe. It’s _fucked up_ and we can’t explain it and _that’s all it is_.”

She didn’t look up from her wrists, but she did smile when she saw Bismuth’s startled reaction in the periphery of her vision. Fingering the edge of the bowl, she ran her arm back and forth as she moved the handle of the spoon around in a circle, and above the soft whisper of metal on metal, she spoke again: “I… I’ve never known the kind of love you shared with Emmie, but… I understand grief. I’ve lost more in my life than I ever thought I’d…” Trailing off, she reached into the bowl and plucked out a stray pomegranate seed. “If I ever lost Rose, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Bismuth snorted, but she kept her retort to herself.

The spoon rattled when Pearl’s hand came to a shaky stop; she crushed the seed between her fingers, and as the blood-red juice trickled down to her knuckles, she steeled herself to push out what she knew she needed to say.

“I’m sorry.”

Rose had once taken her rangy hands, held them tight, and explained to her that apologies could be like windows---necessary to let the light in, but brittle without something sturdy to support them. So she slid closer and tried to build the scaffolding:

“I’m sorry, Bismuth. I pushed you too far. I gave you the chance to speak, and then reneged on that deal. That’s my fault, and I’m sorry. I’m really, truly sorry.” She swallowed. “I never wanted to hurt you, and… I… I hope you can forgive me.”

After another hesitant moment, Pearl allowed her hand to wander through the space between them. “Garnet told me you weren’t ready to talk to me---”

“And yet, here you are.”

Pearl wasn’t always the best at judging social interactions, but she could tell when she was being asked to leave. She spared a glance at Bismuth’s face before rising and gently moving the bowl a little closer with the tips of her toes. “Well. When you’re ready… you know where you can find me.” She tucked a lock of hair off her cheek. “And I hope you do.”

She hesitated before she turned to the door. The bedroom felt like a contradiction---full of the memories of sex and love and life, but haunted by a specter of death at the same time. Bismuth looked like a reflection of that, with her tense, stiff body and her eyes so full of something Pearl couldn’t yet read.

And she herself felt like she was being rent in two, torn between knowing she should leave, and wanting to throw herself on her lover and pull her in close. She just wanted to feel her body, kiss her soft skin, whisper that it was all going to be alright.

Nervously, Pearl tapped her sticky fingertips against her mouth and stared at the unmade bed. She didn’t mean to dawdle, but... “You know, I’ve been meaning to do some laundry,” she said as she reached towards the blanket Bismuth was wringing. “Maybe some fresh sheets would make you feel---”

_**“NO!!”** _

The scream made her jump back, but she didn’t make it far, not with her wrist crushed in Bismuth’s huge fist. Shocked, she yanked her free arm away from the blanket as if it could bite her, and started to splutter. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean anything by it! I wasn’t---I’m not judging, I---”

 _“Please,”_ Bismuth choked out, her voice caught like a rag on a nail. At the same time as she carefully, finger by finger, let Pearl’s wrist out of her grasp, she pulled the coverlet closer to her face; once she had it pressed to her nose, she drew in a wavering breath and then looked up at Pearl, her eyelashes dark and pooling with tears. Crumpling the cloth between her clenched fingers, Bismuth tucked it under her chin and went back to staring somewhere beyond her toes.

“It… it still _smells_ like her,” she said, all hoarse and hushed.

Pearl nodded quickly. “Of course, of course,” she mumbled as she rose again. She’d seen this before, witnessed desolation spiraling around a friend like a comet in its death throes, and should know by now not to step into the orbit.

She inhaled through her nose, then blew it out softly between her lips. The gravity of Bismuth’s loss must be sinking in for real now that the cacophony of the battlefield had dulled to a dim echo; as much as it stung to know that she’d served as little more than a pretty distraction, Pearl could at least console herself with the knowledge that she’d kept her beloved friend from self-destructing, even if only for a day or two.

_Or did you just make it worse?_

Still clutching the blanket like a relic, Bismuth finally looked straight in Pearl’s eyes with a knife-like intensity. “Thank you,” she said quietly, “For… for apologizing.”  
Pearl nodded and pressed her gummy fingers together. “Um. You’re welcome. And if you have anything you want to talk about---”

She cut herself off sharply when Bismuth raised a hand. Her face was firmly set, aside from a tiny shimmer in her eyes. For a moment she was silent, but her lips were lightly moving, as if she was trying to choose her words carefully.

“I want you to know that… I really do love you, Pearl, but I just…” She paused and hugged herself. “…I just have a lot to deal with right now.”

‘ _…And I can’t handle you nagging me about it_ ’ went unspoken, but Pearl could still hear it, clear as day.

“I wish, um, I mean, I hope you… get everything sorted out,” she fumbled, and quickly turned to the door to hide her blush. Just before she ducked into the hallway, she added “And I love you, too.”

She forced herself to at least get halfway down the hall and round the corner before slumping her shoulders against the wall and pressing her palms to her face. As she massaged the setting of her gem, she slowly slid from leaning to sitting, her knees drawn to her chest, mimicking the position she’d left Bismuth in. Maybe it was her way of rebelling against centuries of being told to mind her own business, but she just couldn’t help but want to meddle. The words of a long-lost lover came floating through her mind, none of the sting lost from the repetition: ‘ _Why can’t you ever leave well enough alone, Pearl?_ ’

She didn’t look up when she heard approaching footsteps; she could tell from the stiff, plodding weight who was coming down the hall, and curled her legs up to keep from blocking Snowflake’s path.

“Hello, Pearl,” she said, without her usual inclemency.

“Mmpf.”

She heard an indecisive shuffle, and tried not to groan. For a second, she’d forgotten who she was dealing with. Although it took longer than it should, Pearl lifted her head from her knees and stared up at Snowflake’s face. “Hello, Snowflake.” Often, that was enough to make her go away… but no such luck now, apparently.

“Did you talk to Bismuth?”

She nodded, but it was hard to keep eye contact. Snowflake still had that weird spring in her step, bobbing excitedly like a poorly-anchored ship in a storm. Her face and her hands seemed to have switched characteristics---the former fluttering and alight, the latter stiff and still. It was unnerving.

“Did she tell y---” And she stopped abruptly. “Wait. No. I can’t---I’m not supposed to---”

Pearl wearily placed her chin on her knees and tried to ignore the beginnings of a headache. “Snowflake, please. I respect your privacy---er, and Bismuth’s---but please understand that the secret is not _that_ you’re keeping a secret. You don’t need to dance around it.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, although it seemed the nuance was lost on her. She kept twitching her head back around to look down the hall. “Are you done with her? I want to see how she’s doing.”

“No. I mean, yes, I’m done with---” She could feel her knuckles whitening. “Please, just leave her alone. She doesn’t want to talk right now.”

“Did she say that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what does ‘she doesn’t want to talk’ mean?”

Pearl squeezed her eyes shut and slowly counted back from ten in her head. She knew her comrade wasn’t trying to be disingenuous---it wasn’t her _fault_ \---but having to rehash sentences was aggravating at the best of times, and now she was nearing her last nerve. “’She doesn’t want to talk’ means she. Doesn’t. Want. To. Talk.”

“Just saying it again doesn’t explain it,” she replied, a little huffy.

Slapping both fists down on the ground, Pearl jumped to her feet and tilted her face as close to the obsidian’s as she could. “Well how am I supposed to explain it, hm? Pearls don’t come with a built-in ‘normal-to-Snowflake’ dictionary, you know! _She doesn’t want to talk!!_ Tell me, please---which part of that very simple sentence was too complicated for you to get through your thick skull?!”

She was so wrapped up in her rant that she hadn’t realized she’d been edging closer and closer until Snowflake calmly placed a palm on her forehead and pushed her back. The enormity of the hand on her scalp and the sheer strength behind that simple gesture brought her boiling anger back down to a simmer pretty damn quick.

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that,” Snowflake said with a crisp, quiet edge in her voice. She looked down at her hand as she withdrew it, and tapped her fingers through the air. “I’m just trying to make things better.” Their eyes met. “Things that _you_ fucked up. Don’t lecture me, _Akoya_.”

Pearl nodded mutely and shuffled back until her elbows hit the wall. She brought a fluttering hand up to her belly; the colossus in front of her hadn’t struck with a fist, but the emotional punch was far more painful.

“Now, let me ask in a way that’ll get through _your_ thick skull.” Snowflake pointed towards Bismuth’s bedroom door, then turned her hand to Pearl’s quivering form. “Does she not want to _talk_ … or does she just not want to talk _to you_?”

Her jaw dropped.

_Oh._

Snowflake shrugged, some of the frost leaving her face, and began to bob her way down the hall. Just before she turned the corner, she hesitated, a hand on the wall.

“I know you think I’m stupid, Pearl, but I mean what I say and I say what I mean.” She glanced away. “Don’t waste your words, and… maybe try choosing them better next time.”

 

She entered without knocking, and Pearl sank back to the floor.

 

~

 

Snowflake poked half her body in the room, which was as close as she ever got to knocking. “Bismuth.”

Without turning or smiling, she nodded her head once. “Snowflake.”

Her dark eyes scanned Bismuth’s hunched form, and she felt an odd clicking in her brain. As she tried to slowly piece together what that odd stance could mean, she looked around the room, blinking when she saw the unmade bed; her brow arched and her cheeks flushed when she remembered the time she’d walked in on Bismuth and Emmie in the middle of something that left them all wet and entangled. (She’d never been able to look at zucchinis the same way again). Although the memory had turned from mortifying to hilarious in the intervening months, it seemed wrong to laugh about it now.

After a moment’s consideration, Snowflake closed the door behind her and crouched down in front of Bismuth, her twiddling fingers between her knees. “So?”

“So what?”

“How did it go?”

Bismuth let out a pained sigh and shot her a look she’d long since learned how to interpret.

“With Pearl,” Snowflake clarified, pointing at the door. “Just a minute ago. I saw her in the hall---”

“Yeah?” Bismuth followed her finger with her eyes, and made sure to check the crack under the door; the tight feeling she had clinging in her solar plexus loosened slightly when she didn’t see any tell-tale shadows lingering there. Thank _fuck_ Pearl had figured out how to mind her own business for once. She pulled at her gums with her tongue and lips, thinking back over their aborted conversation. “Um. How was she?”

“Fine. What are you eating?”

She glanced down at the now half-empty bowl. She hadn’t wanted to cave and accept Pearl’s gift. Her first thought had been to ignore it; her second, to merely pick at it; her third, much less a thought than it was a hankering, was to grab the bowl and cram the food in her damn face. As she licked the juice from her mouth, she tried not to marvel too much at her own hunger… but before she could answer the question, Snowflake blurted _“Hey, are those apricots?”_ and gleefully started rummaging around inside her meal.

“Uh, fine,” Bismuth muttered, watching as she chomped them down, one by one. “Go ahead. Stick your grubby fingers in my food. That’s not gross at all.”

“Actually, I’m not sure Pearl was that great,” she said as she whisked the last piece out of her teeth. “She yelled at me.”

Bismuth dragged a sweaty hand through her hair and picked at the tiny twists between her locs. Choosing her words felt like defusing a bomb. “Well…. She’s upset, but she… she shouldn’t have done that, uh...”

“Do you love her?”

Startled, she locked eyes with Snowflake---who held her gaze for much longer than her usual half-a-fluttering-second. “What?! Of course I do!” She pressed her thighs together against the odd little twinge that pulled at her from somewhere between her belly and her cunt. “ _Jeez_ , Snowflake---when have I ever said I didn’t love Pearl?”

She cocked her head to the side and skimmed right over the question. “Are you _in love_ with her?”

Under the blanket her fists tightened; even though it was a reflex of discomfort, not anger, she was very glad it had been hidden. “No,” she croaked, “I’m in love with Emmie!” With the edge of a still-hidden fist, she mindlessly wiped away the tear she hadn’t realized had worked its way down to her jaw. “You know that, Snowflake. Why are you even asking me this?”

“Okay,” Snowflake said, and although her gaze dropped, she did something almost anathema to her---she reached out and gently groped for her hands. Bismuth gasped when she felt the first squeeze; even through the thick fabric she could feel the cool strength of Snowflake’s grasp, so much of a contrast to her own scalding heat… and, shyly, she squeezed back.

Her hands now occupied, Snowflake switched her fidgeting to her elbows, bounding them on her thighs. “Listen, Biz: you’re no Garnet---even less of a Sapphire, for that matter---but do you think you could see yourself being in love with Pearl in the future?”

That took her aback--- the sharp question so bluntly put, the intelligence in Snowflake’s eyes, being called _Biz_ again by someone whose friendship she thought she’d irrevocably severed. “I, uh, I…” She stared down at the hands Snowflake had almost too tightly gripped in her own. “I d-don’t know. It’s too soon, I---”

“Fine.” She released Bismuth’s hands and shifted from squatting to kneeling, presumably so she wouldn’t topple off her tiptoes when she started flicking her head around. Despite herself, Bismuth smiled. Those little tics used to offend her so much, but she’d begun to realize it wasn’t an act of disgust on Snowflake’s part; if anything, it was a sign of comfort and camaraderie.

She sighed deeply. As thick as her grief was, it was starting to feel like something that she’d always shielded herself with was beginning to shred. “Snowflake, look… it’s hard to explain. I love her, but I don’t know if… I mean…”

“You two are weirdoes,” she said flatly.

Bismuth scoffed. “Look who’s talking.”

Mid-tic, she held herself still enough to demand “So do I get an apology now or what?”

“That depends. Are you going to trail mud all over the place?”

She met Snowflake’s stony glare for a moment before turning away with a light chuckle. “Joke, genius. That was a joke.”

“I didn’t want a joke. I want an apology.”

She rubbed her temples. “I know, Snowflake… I know.” And for the first time in hours, if not days---she’d lost track after the first blurry shift of sun over moon---Bismuth rose to her feet. As the sheets fell to the floor, she carefully kicked the stiffness out of her legs and pulled her arms behind her back until her elbows popped. Although it felt good to actually _move_ again, somehow the jangling inside her got worse, as if she’d disturbed whatever black hole had taken up residence in her chest. She’d been so dedicated to keeping still, cold, unfeeling, that she’d tricked herself into believing she’d stopped feeding that yawning emptiness.

After readjusting her headband and poking some of the loose hairs back under it, she looked up from the sheets she’d worn between her knuckles and focused on Snowflake’s face. Bismuth gulped, but the vision of that face all busted and split only lasted a second.

“I’m sorry.”

She took a tentative step forward to bridge the gap between them, and to her great relief, Snowflake didn’t jerk away. The fear had melted. “Look, hon,” she started, “You gotta admit you were acting like a jerk, but that gave me no right to attack you like that, and…” Bismuth felt her whole face rumple with emotion as she pulled around for the words, like picking shard after painful shard from her flesh. “You---we were both upset, but I should’ve just left instead of flipping out. I’m in the wrong here, and I’m really sorry.” She put her hands to her gem. “I never wanted to hurt you, and I hope you can forgive me.”

_You just said EXACTLY what Pearl said to you._

Even on her knees, Snowflake’s eyes were almost level with hers; when she saw them fly open in surprise, she tucked her arms tight against her body and rose halfway. “What? What’s the matter, Biz?”

“Nothing, I just---” With a helpless kind of chuckle, she again wiped a tear from her chin and grinned at her friend. “How the hell do I say this? I miss you, Snowflake.”

She glanced over her shoulder, then back again. “I’m… right here…?”

“I miss having you as a friend,” she clarified. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear you call me ‘Biz’ again. It’s more than---”

A loud _SNAP_ cut her off, followed by an unearthly bang.

Her shoulders hit the wall before she realized what had happened; at first she thought she’d just been dizzy, or weak on her feet from sitting too long, but the surge she’d felt had been strong enough to blow Snowflake back on her ass. They stared at each other for a wide-eyed, gasping moment before the floor lurched again, knocking Emmie’s prized conch shell off the shelf.

Snowflake yelped and jerked her hand away from the broken slivers. “What the hell was that?!” She clapped her hands over her ears as the windowpane began to  
chatter and vibrate, the closet blowing open.

Bismuth slapped her palms on the wall behind her as the ceiling splintered. “I don’t know!”

The ground roared, and they both shrieked. With heavy, rumbling bumps, the bed screeched a full foot away from the wall, which now seemed to be tilted at an acute angle; then the whole room jumped in the other direction, flinging both gems off-balance again.

“Fuck!” Bismuth had to kick the bed away from her as it kept rattling closer and closer. “Snowflake---shit---move it, c’mon!” She made a grab for the door, but it met her halfway as it cracked right off its hinges. She gaped at the broken knob for a second before stumbling back into Snowflake’s waiting arms. “We gotta get to ground-level!” she howled. “ _The whole base is coming down!!”_

With a wail, Pearl came galloping into what used to be the doorway. “What was that? What’s happening?!”

Just as the window exploded into fragments of flying glass, something clicked on Snowflake’s face---the instant, unmistakable snap from ‘Crystal Gem’ and right back into ‘Homeworld mode’. She seized Bismuth and hefted her up against her broad chest, both arms and legs pinned in place. **“Outta the way, Pearl!”**

Pearl either jumped back, or was knocked there from the next heaving of the ground beneath her. “You can’t just---”

“Priorities!” she screamed and barreled forward, her head stuck out in front of both her body and the one she held against her; Bismuth’s howls of outrage were muffled in her armpit as Snowflake used her own skull as a battering ram, breaking every crumbling piece of wall that fell in front of her.

Pearl chased after her as she deftly swung around the banister leading to the downstairs. “I thought they weren’t attacking for awhile! What’s going on?!”

Her jaw clenched, Snowflake tugged Bismuth a little tighter when she felt an impatient bite. “I don’t kn---”

She slipped on the first step, but wrenched her form around to keep her heavy spine between Bismuth and the staircase that was breaking up below them. Pearl’s skittering footfalls came a split-second later and she fell, too, all three bodies thrown around in terrible disarray as the entire rebel base groaned and swayed around them. When they landed at the bottom of the staircase---or what was left of it---Snowflake was on her back, Bismuth in her arms, Pearl on top of them both.

For a full minute they stayed in that awkward, shivering lump as flaking bits of ceiling poured down all around them---then the banister creaked off its foundation and hit the ground with a crash, making them all jump in succession. Bismuth was shaking so hard it rattled Snowflake’s chest below her and Pearl above.

Still sprawled on her back, Snowflake horked and coughed a few times until she blew most of the falling filaments out of her throat. With a shaking hand, she reached up for Bismuth, but touched Pearl’s head instead; as she brushed away some splinters, she mumbled “What the _fucking---?_ Are you two okay?”

Pearl tried to put a hand out for balance, but instead of hitting the floor, it landed on Bismuth’s arm. As she tugged herself away, spluttering dust from her lips, she turned and looked down at her dear friend, and every fractal of light in her form chilled when she saw the look of absolute gob-smacked terror in Bismuth’s frozen eyes.

“Bismuth?” She grabbed her head and yanked it up; showers of grit fell to her chest, into her gem, onto her lap. “Bismuth, oh my stars… are you alright? Are you hurt?”

It was obvious she couldn’t yet answer.

Murky shouts and cries came reverberating from the main chamber as Snowflake sat up without dropping either Bismuth or Pearl. She was moaning and rubbing her forehead when the voice that had been piercing through the cloud of debris made its way around the corner, and Biggs came stumbling in with Garnet in short pursuit.

“Fucking hell, Snowflake!” Biggs cried, slamming her hands to her head. “What did you do to the staircase, you dumb pebble?!”

“It wasn’t me!”

Garnet wasted no time in shoving Biggs away; she dropped to a knee in front of the wounded gems and began to pry off some of the wreckage. “Nothing too serious,” she said, then turned her assessment to the two Snowflake had been cradling in her protective embrace. “Relax, Biggs.”

“Garnet, the ground moved!” She nearly ripped her hair out from her scalp. “The ground just _moved!_ I don’t know about you, but where I come from, the ground doesn’t fucking _move!!_ How can you tell me to ‘relax’ when our entire base just fucking started dancing around like some hig-huffing hooker and…”

Luckily, everyone present was used to Biggs and her rants, and easily tuned her out. As they let her stomp and scream, Garnet made quick but measured movements towards Snowflake, murmuring before touching her as she helped disengage both the gems that had fallen on top of her. She first propped Bismuth against the last standing wall, and as the blacksmith curled her knees up to her chest with nervous puffing, Garnet went to work checking Pearl for any deeper injuries than the bruises blooming on her arms.

“I’m f-f-fine,” she stammered, though she did bring a hand up to test her gem for cracks. “Just shaken up. Er, no pun intended.”

Snowflake was the first to find her footing again, although she did waver a bit. “I was between Biz and the stairs when we fell,” she told Garnet, shaking some of the dust from her vest. Her face had paled considerably when she glanced at Pearl’s scuffed knees. “I---I only had a second to decide, I wasn’t trying to be mean, I just---”

Garnet quickly cut her off. “You did the right thing, Snowflake. Everyone will be fine.”

“Everyone?”

With a thin, breathless gasp, Pearl sagged back against the wall and let her head drop to Bismuth’s shoulder, all cold and clammy. “What was that?” She tried to grab Bismuth’s hand, but she jerked it away to grip at her belly. Turning back to Garnet, she whispered “I thought you said Homeworld wasn’t going to attack---!”

“They aren’t,” she stated as calmly as she could, though her normally-smooth voice was a bit pinched. “It was an earthquake; nothing more, nothing less.” With some trepidation, she placed her hand gem-down on Bismuth’s knee and held it tight. “You were right---we should have put more reinforcements under the roof during construction. I’m sorry we didn’t plan for this earlier.”

“What,” Snowflake puffed, “In the _hell_ is an ‘earthquake’?!”

“A movement of the Earth’s crust. It happens on planets with unstable tectonic plates.” Garnet had her arm extended, but Bismuth didn’t take it as she finally took to her trembling feet. “Keep a hand on the wall,” she advised, watching as Bismuth stumbled to and fro. “We’ll feel aftershocks for at least an hour, and---”

She closed her mouth just before Pearl broke in: “Aftershocks? What are you talking about?! Garnet, we lost half our base!”

“Less than a third, if I’m not mistaken,” she replied as she caught Bismuth mid-fall. “And I’m not.”

“But---”

Garnet rose, blinking away the dust, and, to everyone’s surprise, summoned a brand-new set of shades, the prismatic outer sheen completely hiding her eyes and all the secrets they held. “A minor setback,” she said evenly. As she ran a soothing hand along Bismuth’s arm---a gesture surprisingly intimate for someone as stolid as her---Garnet finished with “All we have to do is wait it out, and then rebuild. It shouldn’t take more than a few days.”

It had taken all that time for Biggs’ rant to run out of steam, and she finally let out a wheeze as she slumped down to her knees. “Well, that’s great, Garn’. Real great. So you’re telling us this planet is a worse drama queen than _that_ freakin’ gabbro”---here she flicked her hand out towards Bismuth---“And we’re just supposed to… what? Take it on the chin?”

“Well that’s nothing _you’re_ not used to,” Bismuth shot back, staggering a bit; several hands reached out to her aid, but with a jabbing motion, she signaled for them to pull back. “I’m fine! I just…” She squeezed the heels of her palms into her eyes. “I just need… let me go and draw up some plans for how we can better rebuild the base.”

"I'll help!" Pearl cried, but a thick, firm arm flew up around her waist as she jumped up to follow. Even s disappointment washed over her like a wave, she allowed herself to be pulled back into Garnet's embrace as she watched her lover slowly lumber away, one hand picking at the sweat-soaked apron, the other drifting around from the hem of her pants and back up to her belly.

"You've done enough for now," the fusion whispered, soft and sweet and gentle, against the side of Pearl's head. "Just trust the process."

~

The next few days sailed by with every Crystal Gem falling in place like knots in a tapestry, some lifting, some carrying, some building; although there were still the occasional whispers that flitted around when Pearl passed by, the hot glow of her scandal had dimmed quite a bit, and the mockery quickly turned Ripper's way when she accidentally upended a crate full of cement on her head. No longer being the butt of every joke was a relief, but Pearl hated how it was soured by pettiness... Then again, she had to admit it felt nice to once again be able to approach her friends without casting a pall over everyone.

She looked up from a support beam she was excavating and let a tiny grin drift over her face. Her comrades were dancing about in different but half-matching beats as they soared in and out of fusions, clicking and clacking walls and buttresses against what had been left of the rebel base. They’d make it ten times as strong as before, she just knew it.

Pearl ducked her head and smiled down at her slippers. So what if they’d been shaken up? From now on, the Crystal Gems would be ready for whatever Fate had to throw their way.

She just wished she’d been able to spend time with Bismuth---or even _see_ her---since the earthquake.

It wasn’t until the fourth day of construction that Crazy Lace snuck up behind Pearl and startled her by clapping both hands over her eyes. She dropped the lathe with a screech and whipped around, ready to slap, but her hand faltered when she saw her friend was holding a tiny scroll out to her with a naughty glimmer in her eye.

“What?!” she squawked. “Crazy Lace, I was right in the middle of something!”

“You might soon be in the middle of something else,” she said with a wink as she shoved the scroll in her hands.

With a clenched frown, Pearl snapped off the wax seal with her fingernail, pretending she couldn’t see Crazy Lace’s knowing smirk, and carefully unrolled the vellum. She was stunned when she saw Bismuth’s handwriting; the expensive choice of paper, the careful seal, the fine ink… they were all lightyears away from her usual slapdash notes. She’d even taken the time to write more clearly and neatly than her usual sloppy, dyspraxic style. Pearl wasn’t sure if she was trying to prove something, or simply trying to impress.

She swallowed as she began to read:

_Pearl –_  
_First thing’s first: thanks for your patience. I think I’m ready to talk, and if you feel the same way, you can find me in the West basement, section Lambda bathroom. Don’t worry about the construction---Crazy Lace has your tasks covered for the next few hours. If you’re not ready, just let her know she can take this scroll back to me._  
_~B_

“So,” she said stiffly as she re-rolled it, glaring at Crazy Lace’s big, dumb grin, “You’re in on this, too?”

“Not as ‘in’ as I’d like to be, love,” she replied, and when she noted Pearl slipping the scroll into her gem, her smile pulled so wide it bared all of her crooked teeth from canines to molars. “Ah! So you’re takin’ the bait?”

She hesitated. “It’s a skill I’ve mastered.”

Crazy Lace bit her bottom lip, and Pearl stiffened. “Aye, love. I shoulda known you can really _master b---”_

“If you finish that sentence, I’ll throw you out the window,” she snipped as she elbowed her way past the cock-eyed Agate, sucking her cheeks between her teeth to keep from scoffing in indignation. Teasing she could handle, but being kept out of the loop was starting to chew at her sanity. With Crazy Lace’s easy giggles trailing after her, Pearl slipped away from the working group she’d been assigned to and started edging her way down the one staircase that hadn’t come crashing apart.

 _Look happy to see her again, but not too excited,_ she told herself as her face subconsciously started practicing various different types of smiles. _Leave the ball in her court. Let her make the first move._

When she finally arrived at the basement bathroom, she vacillated for just a smidge too long; there was something about knowing her ex-lover was behind that door that made her all tremulous inside, and the spare bathrobe Bismuth had left for her sent an extra icy shiver up her spine. What on Earth was that meant to indicate? Should she just strip down and wrap the terrycloth around her? Was Bismuth asking for modesty, or was it something else entirely? Pearl lowered to a squat and carefully fingered the edge of the linen, her lips rolling under her teeth. If only Bismuth had been more direct in her letter! Why could she take the time to fancy it up without making her true intentions clear? It seemed unfair, and yet---

A deep laugh from inside the bathroom shook her back to her feet. “I know it’s you, Pearl!” Bismuth shouted from inside, followed by a splash. “Get in here before you give yourself an aneurysm, willya?”

She heaved a deep breath, and then nudged her way inside. The steaminess of the small bathroom curled up around her, warming all the cold facets of her form, and for the first time in what felt like ages, she smiled, big and wide and true. Bismuth was lounging back in the steel tub, an elbow hanging over the lip, with thick bubbles floating around her---and her smile surprised Pearl deeply. Though there was still some weariness in her eyes, her overall demeanour had changed, and with a nervous clench, Pearl recognized the sentiment deep down in her core. She knew well what it was like to be forced to keep dancing on bloodied feet, and the accompanying relief of taking her shoes off. Bismuth’s soul may have been battered, but at least she’d started to peel something away.

“The… the bathrobe was a few sizes too big for me,” Pearl murmured, picking at the neckline of her uniform. “But thank you anyway.”

She shrugged. “Good thing you look cute no matter what you’re wearing.”

In the close, humid room, some of the shorter curls had loosened from Bismuth’s dreadlocks, giving her what looked like an iridescent halo. Pearl bit her lip, and like never before, realized what humans meant when they said they had their breath taken away.

“Good to see that sly grin on your face again,” Bismuth said jovially as she shifted and stretched in the hot water. “Well?” she added with a splash, “You coming in or what?”

“Er… yes.” Pearl timidly closed the door behind her, and on second thought, flipped the deadbolt instead of the usual lock. “You look very nice,” she said as she took a nervous perch on the rim of the tub. She couldn’t take her eyes off Bismuth; even with most of her body hidden under the bubbles, there was just something about her---something different---that captured her attention. Maybe it was her warm, rosy face… but, with a blush and a giggle, Pearl had to admit that it probably had more to do with her breasts bobbing on the surface of the water.

The suds parted as Bismuth lifted her arm, giving a teasing glimpse of her thick belly. “Hey, uh, my eyes are up here.”

Pearl widened her smirk. “So are your eyebrows. What’s your point?”

It was a risk, but she knew it was worth taking when her lover threw her head back and let out a bellowing laugh. “You’re really something, Pearl! Does Crazy Lace know you’ve been stealing her lines?”

She eventually let her line of sight wander away from those full, tawny nipples. “I’m fine with it so long as I don’t have to take her fashion sense, too.”

The first thing she felt was the crushing weight of Bismuth’s arm around her waist---the second, the crash of salty water all around her. She immediately shot back up to the surface, coughing and sweeping her sopping hair out of her face; even before she shook the water from her ears, she could hear Bismuth’s chuckling rumbling up from under her.

“You know, seeing you look like that is almost worth getting kneed in the tit.”

She sprayed a gust of water out of her mouth, but Bismuth just laughed, not bothering to dodge.

Pearl leaned forward and dusted some of the foam from the setting of Bismuth’s gem. Her other hand came up to tuck under her chin, but she wasn’t quite ready to venture a kiss. “You seem to be doing well.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Better, at least.” She didn’t want to reopen a knitting wound, so she mulled over her question before vocalizing it. “How, uh, how are you… doing… now? All things considered.”

 

 

“I…” Bismuth paused, running a hand through the soft hairs that her headband usually covered. It was odd; even though her smile widened, pulling up little dimples in her cheeks, a peculiar sadness seemed to fall over her as she pondered the answer. “I don’t know, Pearl,” she started as she traced her fingertips down her slim arm, leaving a trail of soap in their wake. “I… sometimes I feel like I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders, and then… sometimes, for a minute or two, or even an hour, it’s like it lifts, and I can laugh again, but…”

Pearl watched as she shifted her tongue around in her mouth, clacking and kissing her teeth while staring away at the tiled wall. From somewhere above them, the sounds of construction briefly rumbled.

“When the weight lifts, it’s slow, like, bit by bit. I’m on Homeworld again, carrying a load, and one brick falls off. Somebody else picks it up, maybe… but at least it’s not there anymore. You know?”

She nodded. Of course she knew.

“And then when I’m starting to feel normal again, it’s---BAM! The grief throws me in the air and drop-kicks me halfway to Andromeda.” With a doleful shake of her head, she turned her smile back to her lover and gently touched her jaw. “Yesterday I was showing Crazy Lace a sketch of a weapon upgrade, and… she was laughing and joking---you know how she is---and then I remembered the way Emmie laughed, and I burst into tears. Just… out of fucking nowhere.”

Pearl dipped her head to kiss the thumb on her chin. “There’s no shame in that.” But there was. They both knew it. For a Pearl to display emotion was _boorish_ , and for a Bismuth, it was _effete_. Homeworld reproached its castes in different ways, but they were still in the same sort of prison.

“Lacey was great about it,” she said with a shrug, but her eyes looked like they were peering out of long-broken bars. “She held me, and she talked me through it, and she kissed away my tears…”

Her thin chest pulled up against Bismuth’s, but Pearl was sure---absolutely sure---that the pang wasn’t of jealousy. Anyone could kiss her lover. She didn’t _own_ her, after all.

The little creases between Bismuth’s eyebrows were deepening. “But she… she had a panic attack after I left. I just… fuck, Pearl, I’m like a walking landmine!”

“No,” she hurried in. “Not at all. We’re all friends here. We stand by each other and we absorb the shocks. I’m sure Crazy Lace found someone to help her after she helped you.”

The hand that had been tracing her jawline moved up to her cheekbone, and Bismuth swept away an errant lock of wet hair. “See? I’m all over the place.”

“Exactly.” She reached up to tug at one of the tightened locs, but changed her mind when she remembered the first time she’d done so without permission. Stroking the side of her face seemed more intimate, anyway. “Grieving isn’t linear, Bismuth. I’d be more worried if you _weren’t_ all over the place.”

“Everything makes sense, because nothing makes sense, right?”

Pearl smiled warmly and finally tilted her chin up to land a tiny peck on Bismuth’s lips. As she did so, seemingly as an afterthought, she shifted her uniform away; even under the film of water, she knew it would be noticed, and tittered under her breath when the soft press of her breasts made Bismuth gasp.

“Pearl…” She tightened their embrace and kissed the fluff where her hairline dipped downwards to her gem. “Look, we fucked up, there’s no mistaking that. But…” Her hot breath ghosted over her lover’s forehead. “Do you think we can…maybe… try to start taking it one day at a time from now on?”

With a quiet little purr, she nuzzled against the lips on her setting. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, my darling.”

She had no idea how long they stayed like that; the only way she could sense time passing was by the slow, filmy popping of the bubbles. Eventually Bismuth’s hand came up to her neck, and Pearl allowed herself to be pulled into a soft kiss.

When she drifted away, her eyes were fuzzy and unfocused, but Bismuth’s were as sharp as ever. A niggling thought began to tug at her, and before she could reconsider, Pearl let her hand wander downwards.

“Bismuth,” she murmured as she nudged her way into her gem, “If you don’t mind me asking… why are you bathing in water? Don’t you prefer lava?”

“I wanted you to join me,” she said easily, but there was a twinkle playing in her eyes. “Besides, Garnet’s been keeping a close eye---or three---on me. Wouldn’t want me to damage anything.”

Her mouth twisted. “Wh... 'Damage anything'? What are you talking about?”

After a very deliberate eye roll, Bismuth reached up and gripped Pearl’s wrist. “So, you still haven’t figured it out, huh?”

“No. No one’s breathed a word to me. And, to be honest, it’s starting to drive me mad.”

Bismuth dusted her knuckles with a kiss, and then, without breaking eye contact, she very, very slowly brought Pearl’s tiny hand down to rest on her belly. “I’m no Garnet---even less of a Sapphire, for that matter---but I predict you’ll find out in the next few months.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand here's where the story officially goes into AU territory ;)
> 
> I packed a bunch of details in here---for example, Snowflake calling Pearl "Akoya", and Biggs having a prosthetic arm. Make of those what you will!
> 
> And, as always, thanks so much for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah... took some risks with this one. Honestly, I could go on about how the writers and animators (and even Uzo Aduba) seemed to drop hints throughout the episode that Bismuth either has what humans used to call "shell shock", or at the very least some internal scars from the war. This is going to be almost entirely about the relationship between her and Pearl, with her fallen lover only mentioned in flashbacks. I loves me some Bispearl, but there's not a lot of it.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!


End file.
